Prosecution seeks arrest warrant for DP leader Lee Jae-myung

Feb 17, 2023, 08:24 am

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Main opposition Democratic Party (DP) leader Lee Jae-myung visits a facility for the elderly to look into heating bill issues on Feb. 16, 2023./ Source: Yonhap

AsiaToday reporters Kim Chul-joon & Lim Sang-hyuk

Prosecutors sought an arrest warrant for opposition leader Lee Jae-myung on Thursday over development corruption and bribery allegations during his tenure as the mayor of Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province from 2010 to 2018. It is the first time in South Korea that the prosecution has sought an arrest warrant for the opposition leader. Prosecutors defined the case as “local corruption between political and business circles” while the opposition leader called it an “attempt to destroy the constitutional order.”

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office filed for Lee’s warrant on charges of breach of trust, bribery, conflict of interest, corruption and concealing profits surrounding development projects in Seongnam’s Daejang-dong and Wirye districts and the city’s municipal football club.

Lee is charged with a breach of trust for removing a contractual clause for the project that entitled the city government to a share of the profits, costing the city developer some 489.5 billion won in dividends. He is also charged with conflict of interest for abusing insider information about the Daejang-dong project, helping private developers reap profits of around 788.6 billion won.

The prosecution also requested an arrest warrant transferred from the Suwon District Prosecutor’s Office involving Seongnam FC donation case.

The third-party bribery charges were applied for allegations that Lee, serving as the head of Seongnam FC during his mayorship, attracted13.3 billion won in corporate donations to Seongnam’s football club from four companies in return for administrative favors.

Lee Won-seok, chief prosecutor of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, said, “We see this as an extremely serious issue since it is a local land corruption that caused real estate developers and brokers to gain the astronomical development benefits that should be originally returned to local residents and municipalities.”

Lee has denied all the allegations, saying, “This request for an arrest warrant will be recorded in history as an extraordinary incident. The prosecutor dictatorship regime, which neglects people’s pain and abuses national power to remove a political enemy, will be judged by the people and history.”

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