The prosecution has taken the final step in requesting an arrest warrant for Lee Jae-myeong, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea, who they believe is at the peak of the scandal involving Gyeonggi Province and Ssangbangwool Group’s alleged remittances to North Korea. Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office Criminal Division 6 (Chief Kim Young-nam) summoned Representative Lee for the second time at 1:30 p.m. on the 12th as a suspect on charges of providing third-party bribes, and completed the investigation at approximately 3:30 p.m., about 1 hour and 50 minutes after Lee’s appearance. After reading for about an hour and 30 minutes, Representative Lee signed and sealed only the second investigation statement. The first statement was only read but not signed and sealed.
It is said that the prosecution reduced the number of questions prepared by one-third in consideration of Representative Lee’s health condition, which was on his 13th day of fasting, and asked only the key points of the suspicion of payment of the cost of visiting North Korea. As with the first summons on the 9th, CEO Lee denied all charges, including the charge that former Ssangbangwool Group Chairman Kim Sung-tae paid $5 million for smart farms and that he had North Korea request and remit $3 million to cover the cost of his visit to North Korea. did.
“If Lee Hwa-young did something like that, he would be fired… “Replace written statement”According to prosecutors, Representative Lee maintained an attitude of drawing a line with former Deputy Governor Lee, just as he did during the first investigation, saying, “I don’t know everything about the Gyeonggi Provincial Government, and if former Deputy Governor Lee had done something like that, I would have been fired.” . He directly denied some of the facts and expressed his intention to replace some with an 8-page written statement submitted on the 9th.
The prosecution attempted to elicit Representative Lee’s statement by presenting official documents approved while he was serving as Governor of Gyeonggi Province from 2018 to 2021. Like in the first investigation, he listened to the prosecutor’s questions with his eyes closed, and if he had any doubts, he said, “Please tell me again,” and then pondered the questions and came up with an answer. This time, too, before the investigation began, Representative Lee requested, “Please write down what I said,” and the prosecutors said that the part of what Representative Lee had said for a while, less than an hour before the investigation began, was included in the report as is on one and a half pages of A4 . This is the explanation.
Based on today’s investigation, the prosecution plans to request an arrest warrant for CEO Lee sometime soon. If the corresponding arrest motion is received by the National Assembly, there is a high possibility that it will be reported to the plenary session on the 21st and put to a vote on the 25th.
Earlier, Representative Lee entered the Suwon Prosecutors’ Office Building in a van at around 1:22 PM on the same day, shook hands with about 20 Democratic Party members lined up, and then stood in the photo line. Representative Lee, who was walking in with his head down, said, “Today, I will see if I can present evidence that I am involved in remittances to North Korea,” and then added, “For two years, I have paid attorney fees, paid smart farms, and paid travel expenses to North Korea.” Changing the subject, dozens of prosecutors and hundreds of investigators the size of a prosecutor’s office were mobilized to conduct hundreds of searches and seizures and interrogate hundreds of people, but not a single piece of evidence was found. “The reason is because it is not true,” he said.
He continued, “I am not foolish enough to commit a serious crime by asking North Korea to pay a large sum of money, as much as 10 billion won, to an unknown gangster and a corrupt businessman who used to be an illegal loan shark just to visit North Korea and take a picture.” “No matter how hard you try to call me out and make it seem like I’m a criminal, you can’t create facts that don’t exist,” he said.
Representative Lee, who stood on the photo line at around 6:12 p.m., said, “There was nothing illegal in the process of visiting North Korea,” and added, “I hope that the prosecution will come to its senses now, recognize the sovereignty of the people, and properly use the rights given to the country and the people. “In the end, it’s a private return,” he said. Representative Lee boarded the van at the prosecutor’s office parking lot, exited through the back door, got out of the vehicle, waved at supporters, bowed at a 90-degree angle, and then got back on.
Gyeonggi-do and Ssangbangwool Group consortium submit evidence video
Meanwhile, the prosecution proved that Gyeonggi Province and Ssangbangwool Group had in fact formed a consortium to pursue projects toward North Korea at the 46th trial on former Deputy Governor Lee’s bribery charges held on this day at the hearing of the 11th Criminal Division of the Suwon District Court (Chief Shin Jin-woo). Crucial photos and videos were submitted as evidence. JoongAng Ilbo obtained these photos and videos from a reporter, not the prosecution.
These are photos and videos showing the ‘North-South 토토사이트Economic Cooperation Project Agreement Ceremony’ between Ssangbangwool Group and the North Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee at the Kempinski Hotel in Shenyang, China, on January 17, 2019, and the subsequent dinner. Former Deputy Governor Lee Lee and former Gyeonggi Province Peace and Cooperation Director Shin Mo also attended the agreement ceremony and dinner. The video shows a scene at a banquet where former Chairman Kim tells Song Myeong-cheol, Vice Director of the Korea Asia-Pacific Committee, who manufactures bomb liquor, pointing to former Deputy Governor Lee sitting to his left and saying, “Let me just say one thing, Myeong-cheol, Hwa-young is older than me.”
“Kim Seong-tae’s statement matches, Lee Hwa-young’s statement is proven to be completely false.”The video of the agreement ceremony included an audio of former Deputy Governor Lee saying, “Stop using English like this in the forum.” Former Chairman Kim and Deputy Chief Song, who are in the video frame, joined hands after signing the agreement and said, “If we wish, let’s do unification only three times,” before singing. At the same time, former Chairman Kim laughed and said, “Don’t we need to make him president?”
When submitting evidence, the prosecution said, “Lee Hwa-young claimed that she had never attended this event on January 17, 2019, and former Director Shin stated that their paths only briefly overlapped,” adding, “Additional information related to the Foreign Exchange Transactions Act case being submitted today. “The two videos of evidence are material that directly proves that Kim Seong-tae’s statement matches and Lee Hwa-young’s existing statement was completely false,” he said. He went on to claim, “The fact that Lee Hwa-young actively participated in the agreement ceremony and the fact that the idea of making Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myeong the president was openly acknowledged is fully proven that Gyeonggi Province was deeply involved in this incident.”
At the trial on this day, a war of nerves was rekindled over whether to agree to evidence in the prosecution’s statement investigation, which included a statement to the effect that “Former Chairman Kim decided to bear the cost of the visit to North Korea orally to Governor Lee Jae-myung.” It is a statement that could be fatal to Representative Lee, who is drawing a line by claiming that he did not know everything that the former Deputy Governor Lee had pursued regarding the charge of providing bribes to a third party.
Attorney Gwang-min Kim (Democratic Party provincial lawmaker), who was appointed as a defense attorney for former Vice-Governor Lee, said, “I do not agree with the fact that former Vice-Governor Lee’s interrogation record of the prosecution suspect, which acknowledged Lee’s connection with the suspicion of remittances to North Korea by Ssangbangwool, is accepted as evidence in the trial.” But it ended in vain.
The prosecution said, “The investigation records are so extensive that even the public defender was unable to review them all. Does this mean that the newly appointed lawyer reviewed them all?” and “The lawyer, who is a current (Democratic Party) provincial council member, made this opinion ahead of the investigation of an important person (Representative Lee).” He pointed out, “Isn’t that what you paid for?” In response to the court’s question, “Has there been an agreement with the defendant?” Attorney Kim answered “Yes,” but the court said, “Because the defendant’s position may change (again), we will not decide immediately whether to admit the evidence.”