Prosecution to Resume Investigation into 50 Billion Won Worth of Samsung Bonds

The Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office said on August 19 that it received from the court a seizure and search warrant for investigation into bond transaction records of Korea Securities Depository (KSD) to check if Samsung Group converted the bonds it purchased from 2000 to 2002 into cash.

An official at the prosecution said, “We thought that we needed to check if Samsung’s bonds have been converted into cash so far because the situation changed as Choi, a former Samsung Securities official engaged in transactions of bonds at that time, came back to Korea.”

The official said, “The execution of the warrant will be possible next week as we are sorting out the number of bonds,” adding, “If there are bonds that entered the KSD, we will be able to know who converted the bonds into cash. Therefore, we will be able to answer the questions regarding the Samsung bonds.”

In the process of investigation into illegal presidential election funds, the prosecution has secured circumstantial evidence that Choi mediated the transaction of 80 billion won worth of bonds from 2000 to 2002.

The prosecution also established that 30.2 billion won out of that amount was sent towards politics in 2002 before the presidential election. However, it failed to confirm where the remaining 50 billion won worth of bonds went.

jin0619@donga.com