A Key Question Slows Probers

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A Key Question Slows Probers

The bribery scandal implicating a venture firm president, financiers from a number of mutual finance companies and bureaucrats at the Financial Supervisory Service drags on with no progress in the investigation. Stalling it is the question whether senior ruling party and government officials have illegally profited by investing money in private funds.

The suspicion was first raised when Chung Hyun-joon, president of Korea Digital Line and the founder of the private funds implicated in the scandal, suggested before his appearance at the prosecution that he was told by Lee Kyung-ja, his close associate, that she had many connections in the upper echelons of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party.

Rep. Chung Hyung-keun of the opposition Grand National Party then suggested that a senior ruling party official, identified only as Mr. "K," deposited money in Mr. Chung's funds.

Representative Chung's allegation is followed by Rep. Lee Ju-young's naming of the ruling party officials previously described as the three Ks.

Amid these allegations and what the ruling party dubbed "political offensives by the opposition," the prosecution has only discovered the number of individuals who invested in Mr. Chung's funds - 653. His six funds are worth 70.3 billion won.

The prosecution, however, said that it is extremely difficult to establish definite connections between the money involved and the depositors, since many of these individuals joined the funds under false names.

In addition, key figures in the scandal have fled the country. Oh Ki-joon, president of Shinyang Factoring and the man who allegedly played a crucial role in recruiting senior politicians for Mr. Chung's funds, left Korea for Guam on Oct. 26. Jang Rae-chan, a director at the Financial Supervisory Service who supposedly knew where the bribe money went, was found dead on Tuesday.

If the politicians are discovered to have been guaranteed by Mr. Chung to be compensated after incurring loss, they will have to face criminal prosecution.

by Park Jai-hyun

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