Six or Seven Hanwha Officials Banned from Leaving the Country

It was revealed on November 26 that the Central District Public Prosecutor’s Office (Head prosecutor Park Sang-gil) of Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office has issued foreign travel bans to Hanwha’s CEO Kim Seung-yeon and six or seven more Hanwha officials, related to suspicions of Hanwha’s lobbying in the process of taking over Korean Life Insurance.

It is reported that among those banned from leaving the country, Kim Yeon-bae, vice president of Hanwha Securities, who was the president of restructuring headquarters of Hanwha at the time of Hanwha’s takeover of Korea Life Insurance, is included.

Vice President Kim testified at the presidential election funds investigation on January, “Taking over Korea Life Insurance was an undertaking on which the very existence of Hanwha depended, and I ordered the purchase of bonds worth 3.3 billion for lobbying political and governmental bodies.”

The prosecution summoned employees such as accountants who had been working for Hanwha’s restructuring headquarters at the time of Hanwha’s takeover of Korea Life Insurance in 2002, and ordered Hanwha to turn in documents on the Korea Life Insurance undertaking and documents related to the bonds that are suspected to have been used in lobbying.

Among the eight million won worth of bonds that were purchased from August to September of 2002, the prosecution is particularly focusing its investigation on the uses of about two billion won worth of bonds that CEO Kim said were “lent to an acquaintance” but actually were not.

Prosecution determined that CEO Kim, whose sentence was settled on November 24 when he gave up on a final appeal after his sentence was reduced to paying a fine at the appeal on the political fund law violation case, may suddenly leave the country, thus placing a ban on his departure immediately after the sentence.

jin0619@donga.com