Minister Stumbles Trying To Explain Financial Luck

Representative Ahn Kyung-ryul of the opposition Grand National Party grilled the deputy of Construction and Transportation Minister Ahn Jung-nam Thursday about the minister's shifting explanations of his financial assets.

During a parliamentary hearing on the ministry, the opposition lawmaker asked the deputy minister where his boss got 150 million won ($115,400) to purchase a 1,850-square-foot apartment in Seoul's upscale Apkujeong district in 1979. The minister had said that his assets totaled 150 million won in 1980.

Representative Ahn also asserted that the minister had transferred the rights to a piece of land in Daechi-dong, another well-to-do neighborhood in southern Seoul, to his younger brother to avoid scrutiny. And he demanded that the minister clarify where he invested 150 million won in 1980. At Wednesday's hearing, Minister Ahn first said he had put it in savings, then said the money was actually invested in "high-interest financial products and stocks."

Thursday's hearing was held with the minister absent. He has reportedly been hospitalized due to dizziness.

A bank official said that for a Grade 4 official at the tax office, as Mr. Ahn was in 1980, to amass 300 million won with his wages alone would have been a virtual impossibility. The monthly wage for a Grade 4 tax official at the time was 200,000 won. Mr. Ahn entered the civil service in 1970 as a mid-level tax officer in Yeosu, South Cholla province.

"Even if you didn't spend a penny and put everything in a product that paid a 24 percent annual interest － the highest rate at that time － it would have taken 28 years to make 300 million won," the bank official said.

He said Mr. Ahn's explanation particularly did not make sense because General Chun Doo-hwan's government in 1982 lowered the benchmark interest rate to 8 percent to alleviate the burden on corporations.

Stock market analysts also said Mr. Ahn could not have expanded his wealth so dramatically in the stock market because of political turbulence and a series of fraudulent financial schemes in South Korea at the time.

A lawmaker in the National Assembly's Construction and Transportation Committee who used to be in the civil service said it was customary in the 1970s and 1980s for local residents to gather huge sums of money for a departing government official.

by Chun Young-gi