Former President Chun Doo-hwan's second son has expressed his intention to voluntarily pay the remainder of unpaid fines levied on his disgraced father convicted of taking bribes while in office in the 1980s, prosecution sources said Wednesday.
Chun, a former Army general who seized power in a coup, was ordered by the Supreme Court in 1997 to return to state coffers some 220 billion won ($196.8 million) he was found to have illegally accumulated through bribery while in office as president from 1980 to 1988.
So far, he has returned only 52.8 billion won, with the remaining 167.2 billion won unpaid. He insists that he can't pay the rest because he is broke. However, investigators suspect that Chun's sons and in-laws helped the former president hide the massive assets by opening bank accounts under borrowed names and through shady real-estate deals.
His second son, Chun Jae-yong, said during the prosecution's questioning that his family intends to pay the fines voluntarily, the sources said.
The younger Chun returned home earlier in the day after being quizzed by the prosecutors more than 18 hours over suspicions that he evaded taxes in a land transaction to turn a profit.
The prosecution office suspects that the younger Chun evaded the taxes in the transaction in 2006, in which he bought a plot of land in Osan, just south of Seoul, from his now-jailed uncle, Lee Chang-seok, for one-tenth of the officially appraised price.
The land might have also been allegedly purchased with illegal funds from the elder Chun, prosecution officials added.
Suspicions have also risen that Lee let the younger Chun buy another piece of land at a below-market price by forging papers, prosecution officials said.
The prosecution office said it is also tracking down the source of expensive villas, both in the country and in the United States, owned by the younger Chun, suspecting that they have been purchased with his father's illegal funds.
The prosecution will first review the contents of the questioning before deciding whether to bring charges against the younger Chun, the sources said. (Yonhap News)
