Arrest Warrant for Aide to Ruling Party Member.

On January 31, the Seoul Central District Prosecutor`s Office issued an arrest warrant for an aide to a ruling Uri party lawmaker, known only by the surname of Lee (42), on charges of intentionally leaking confidential documents on the multi-purpose practical satellite – the Arirang 3 – to a foreign company. An arrest warrant was also issued for the head of an agency that deals with Russian satellites, Lee (47), the alleged recipient of the documents.

Adviser Lee is now under suspicion for sending confidential documents containing large amounts of information, including a bid on the camera equipment of the Arirang 3, via e-mail to Korean-American, Lee, on multiple occasions in April of last year. Lee then reportedly handed over the documents to a Russian Satellite development agency.

The prosecution said that they secured the evidence last month when they seized a number of e-mails exchanged between the two and Lee’s office.

The prosecution suspects that aide, Lee, acquired the documents from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) with the help of an acquaintance at the Science, Technology, Information and Telecommunication Committee of the National Assembly. And then, he seems to have requested the document under the lawmaker’s name that he was working for as an adviser.

The Prosecution said, “ The lawmaker that Lee was working for has nothing to do with this incident. It is still not confirmed whether there was financial transaction between advisor Lee and the head of the agency.”

The camera equipment on the Arirang 3 is worth hundreds of billions of won and bids to provide the device were made by a number of companies from Russia, Germany, and Israel. When the Russian company failed to win the bid, they tried to appeal to the Korean government through the Russian embassy in Seoul, claiming that the bid was conducted in an unfair manner, after having acquired the document from Lee. In the process, the prosecution has uncovered that the document was acquired illegally.

In response, advisor Lee said, “When I received the information that the bidding process was unfair, I asked KARI for the document and commissioned Lee, who is an expert as well as an informant, to interpret the data. However, by the time I asked for the document, the bidding had already ended and a company had been selected. So even though the word “confidential document” was written on the file, I didn’t consider it was a secret document.”

will71@donga.com