Lee orders unsparing probe into aides

President Lee Myung-bak on Tuesday broke his silence on his aides’ alleged misdeeds by ordering the Justice Ministry to investigate the possible bribery cases thoroughly and quickly.

Lee instructed relevant government agencies to devise ways to prevent and deal with such irregularities, prompting the Justice Minister, heads of the National Tax Service, the National Police Agency, the Financial Supervisory Service and the Board of Audit and Inspection as well as Lee’s chief of staff to convene a meeting hours later.

The agencies will hold working-level meetings on a weekly basis to share information for investigations, Presidential Chief-of-Staff Yim Tae-hee told reporters.

“We are seeing allegations of irregularities by associates (of the president). We cannot leave the situation as it is,” Lee was quoted as saying during the weekly Cabinet meeting by his spokesman Park Jeong-ha.

“It all happened because the so-called ‘associates’ failed to draw a clear line between public office and private relations.”

The court was to decide later Tuesday whether to issue a warrant to detain Kim Du-woo, Lee’s top aide for public relations who resigned two weeks ago upon being subpoenaed for allegedly receiving kickbacks from a savings bank lobbyist. The prosecution is expected to summon Shin Jae-min, who served as second and first vice minister of culture for two and a half years until August last year, for questioning this week on allegations that he was financially patronized by a businessman.

Underscoring “cleanliness” as one of his government’s goals, Lee said the closer the suspects are to the president, the more inexorably they should be probed.

Ruling Grand National Party leader Hong Joon-pyo on Tuesday urged the prosecution to focus on investigating the scandals, mentioning that cronyism led to the “downfall” of the previous five presidents toward the end of their terms.

“To fulfill its duty of scraping out the ‘great evil,’ the prosecution should make utmost efforts to get to the bottom of the suspicions,” Hong said in a radio address Tuesday.

“I have called on the presidential office as well as all involved government agencies to take strong, preemptive measures against irregularities by the president’s relatives and confidants.”

Hong added that the GNP will also revamp its internal standards for anti-corruption, hinting at strict law enforcement on party members should they face similar accusations.

The main opposition Democratic Party clobbered the Lee administration, referring to officials implicated in the ongoing inquiry of Busan Mutual Savings Bank and SLS Group, which is run by Shin’s purported patron and some failed natural resource exploration ventures abroad.

“We are seeing news of influence-peddling in newspapers everyday, but we do not know when they took place, or whether those people were punished or indicted,” DP floor leader Kim Jin-pyo said.

Park Jie-won, former floor leader of the DP, said in a radio interview that he will disclose a list of “everyone” Park Tae-gyu, the lobbyist hired by Busan Mutual Savings Bank to avoid suspension, at the parliamentary audit on the Central Investigation Unit of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office next Tuesday.

By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)