'Evidence' Presented to Prove Lee’s Land Speculation

Korea Times, December 9, 2007

By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter

The United New Democratic Party (UNDP) claimed again Sunday that leading presidential candidate Lee Myung-bak was the real owner of real estate in southern Seoul, presenting several news articles from 1993.

Party sources said that the UNDP was seeking an impeachment of the prosecution saying it did not investigate the financial scam properly.

Presidential nominee Lee Myung-bak of the Grand National Party (GNP) has denied that he has nothing to do with the land in Dogok-dong, southern Seoul.

``Several newspapers said in 1993 that Lee kept hidden the property worth 15 billion won ($16.3 million) when reporting his assets as a lawmaker,'' Rep. Lee Hae-chan, who chairs the party's ad hoc committee on the case, told reporters. ``They clearly stated that he illicitly registered the property in the name of his brother-in-law Kim Jae-jung.''

The UNDP lawmaker added that the GNP candidate received the light punishment of a warning because he helped the successful run of former President Kim Young-sam in 1992.

The chairman argued that uncovering the real owner of the Dogok-dong lands is the key to finding out whether the frontrunner is involved in a stock price manipulation scandal.

He insisted that the GNP candidate invested the money gained from the real estate in consulting firm BBK and was then involved in the company's stock rigging.

Lee, the former mayor of Seoul and CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction, has been dogged by the financial scam but the prosecution cleared him of allegations over the case.

In August, prosecutors said the controversial property belonged to a third party unlike the former executive's insistence that his brother Lee Sang-eun owned the land.

``They said they would resume the investigation after alleged stock rigger Kim Kyung-joon is extradited,'' the UNDP lawmaker said. ``But the prosecution didn't reveal who possessed the land in its announcement last Wednesday.''

For those reasons, the prosecution's probe result is invalid and unacceptable, he added.

The UNDP plans to submit an impeachment resolution and have the National Assembly invoke its right to investigate the case involving what they call politically-biased prosecutors, party sources said.

Moreover, the party may call on Prosecutor-General Lim Chae-jin and Justice Minister Chung Soung-jin to question prosecutors who investigated the scandal, they said.

ksy@koreatimes.co.kr