The prosecution on Friday indicted a senior prosecutor and the co-founder of South Korea’s biggest online gaming company Nexon over alleged bribery and shady stock transactions, ending a monthlong probe into the high-profile corruption scandal.
It also requested that the Justice Ministry dismiss the disgraced prosecutor, a sanction which will cut down his pension by 25 percent and ban him from opening a law office for three years.
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Lee Geum-ro, the chief of the prosecution’s special team for the Nexon bribery case, announces the probe result on Friday. (Yonhap) |
Jin Kyung-joon, 48, allegedly received about 920 million won ($821,000) in kickbacks from Kim Jung-ju, 47, the chairman of Nexon’s holding firm NXC between 2005 and 2014, the prosecution said.
It is the first time that an incumbent high-ranking prosecutor has been indicted in the prosecution’s 68-year history.
The indictment comes 23 days after a special investigation team launched a probe into the vice-ministerial level prosecutor over suspected dubious stock dealings. The scandal came to light early this year after he reported a massive increase in his wealth in 2015.
The prosecution suspects that Jin took 425 million won from Kim in 2005, bought Nexon’s unlisted shares with the money and sold them at 1 billion won to buy Nexon Japan’s shares in 2006. As Nexon Japan’s stock value soared in 2011 upon entering the stock market, Jin made about 12 billion won in profits through a sale of the shares.
The prosecution also acquired evidence that Jin had used a company car under the name of Nexon from 2008 to 2009 and pocketed 30 million won to take over the car. Over 11 occasions between 2005-2014, he purportedly received about 50 million won from Kim for his family’s travel expenses.
Jin also allegedly submitted falsified documents to the public official ethics commission from 2010 to 2015 to disguise the shares as a loan he borrowed from his mother-in-law, which the prosecution saw as obstructing justice.
A series of suspected crimes that took place between 2005 and 2008 will be seen as all connected, which extends the seven-year statute of limitations for offering bribes in 2005 and gives the prosecution power to charge the Nexon founder Kim with bribery. For Jin, the 10-year statute of limitations for taking bribes runs out in November.
Prosecutors said the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office will continue investigating the Nexon founder Kim over allegations of embezzlement and breach of trust, which a civic group SpecWatch believes have caused damages worth 2.8 trillion won in the company.
Seo Yong-won, the CEO of Hanjin Group, was also indicted on charges of making business contracts worth 10 billion won with a cleaning company run by Jin’s brother-in-law when he was then vice president of South Korea’s largest carrier Korean Air in 2010.
Jin is suspected of peddling influence over Seo in exchange for favors in the investigation into allegations of Hanjin Group chairman Cho Yang-ho’s tax evasion. Jin dropped the case, but the prosecution said that it could not find links between the closure of the probe and the business deals.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office announced its plan to establish a committee comprising four taskforce teams in an effort to reform the prosecution’s top-down culture. The move follows Jin’s corruption scandal and the death of a young prosecutor who committed suicide allegedly due to his senior’s verbal and physical abuse.
By Ock Hyun-ju (
laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)
