The Capture of a Large Amount of Bonds Transactions

The prosecution, on the investigation over illegal donations to politicians during the 2002 presidential election, is questioning if new evidence about a large amount of bonds transactions is related to the presidential election fund.

The central part of the public prosecutor investigation headquarters (Chief Ahn Dae-hee) declared on February 27, “We are following the transfer process of a bundle of bonds, newly found evidence which flowed into the private money market in 2001.”

According to the source, the prosecution, referring to this case, secured partial testimony from debenture holders and is investigating if Samsung actually purchased additional 2,000 billion won in bonds in 2001, other than the 3,300 billion won in bonds in the 2002 presidential election

Because the prosecution is unable to secure the number of bonds, it cannot secure clear evidence, such as if Samsung actually purchased bonds and if the bonds were transferred to a political party.

The prosecution presently regards these newly found bonds unrelated to the illegal fund for the presidential election, from the fact that the expiration date of these bonds was 2001, while the bonds that Samsung donated to Grand National Party (GNP) were purchased in 2002, the year of the presidential election.

The prosecution re-summoned Kim In-ju, a Samsung Group chairman, to investigate whether Samsung purchased the problematic “bundle of bonds.”

The prosecution will summon and investigate Lee Hak-soo, a Samsung Group vice chairman, over the group’s illegal donations to election camp candidate Roh Moo-hyun.

On the other hand, the prosecution issued a warrant for the arrest of Lee In-jae, who refused to be summoned, in spite of several summons notices concerning the acceptance of 250 billion won in illegal funds.

Tae-Hoon Lee jefflee@donga.com