Lee Kunhee Cleared of charges

Lee Kun-hee Cleared of Slush Fund Suspicion

By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

The prosecution will indict a television news reporter who broke the story on the illegal eavesdropping operations of the spy agency in former governments for violating the communication privacy protection law.



In concluding its lengthy probe on the wiretapping scandal, however, the prosecution decided not to take legal action against some high-ranking executives at Samsung Group, including group chairman Lee Kun-hee, who faced allegations of providing slush funds to presidential candidates ahead of the 1997 elections, citing lack of evidence.

The suspicions were backed by news reports on private conversations between company officials that were eavesdropped by spy agents.

The Seoul District Prosecutors' Office yesterday announced the results of its five-month investigation on the spy agency's illegal surveillance activities on civilians during the governments of former presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung.

``The prosecution has conducted a thorough investigation of the spy agency's illegal wiretapping operations on politicians, businessmen, judicial officials and journalists in the past governments. However, with the statute of limitations on most illegal activities under the Kim Young-sam government expiring and the spy agency already having destroyed a significant part of related evidence, there had been difficulties in pushing ahead the investigation,'' said senior prosecutor Hwang Kyo-ahn, who directed the wiretapping investigation, in a news conference yesterday.

During its investigation of the spy agency's wiretapping allegations, the prosecution summoned more than 460 people, including five former spy agency directors and 132 spy agency officials, retired or incumbent.

In Wednesday's news conference, the prosecution revealed that the Agency of National Security Planning, the predecessor of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), had spied on more than 5,400 individuals, including politicians, businessmen and journalists, from 1994 to 1997. The eavesdropping activities were mostly conducted in restaurants, hotels, golf courses and other frequent gathering places, according to prosecutors.

The investigators also said the wiretapped information was reported regularly to former President Kim Young-sam, who held office from 1993 to 1998, and his close aides including his second son Kim Hyun-chul and former senior presidential secretary Lee Won-jong.

Earlier this month, prosecutors indicted former spy agency directors Lim Dong-won and Shin Gunn, who served under the 1998-2003 administration of Kim Dae-jung, for allowing the surveillance of more than 1,800 high-profile figures during their tenures.

The prosecution concluded by indicting Lee Sang-ho, a reporter from local television station MBC, based on the fact that he violated privacy laws by publicly revealing information gathered through illegal methods.

In a news report in July, Lee reported the contents of an audiotape containing a wiretapped conversation between Samsung vice chairman Lee Hak-soo and former Korean Ambassador to Washington Hong Seok-hyun, the publisher of the Samsung-affiliated newspaper JoongAng Ilbo.

According to the report, the two men discussed distributing illegal campaign funds to two rival candidates ahead of the 1997 elections.

MBC's audiotapes, dubbed the ``X-files'' by the media, were traced to now-arrested former intelligence agent Kong Un-young, who had led a special eavesdropping unit within the spy agency during the 1990s. Law enforcement authorities found 274 audiotapes containing wiretapped conversations and 13 documents containing their transcripts at Kong's house in July.

Prosecutors will also indict Kim Yun-kwang, editor-in-chief of the monthly news magazine Monthly Chosun (Wolgan Chosun), which printed the contents of the MBC audiotapes in its September edition.

However, the prosecution said it will not take legal action against the Samsung executives, stating that the statute of limitations for illegal political funding extends only three years under the Korean law, making it impossible to prosecute them.

The probe on Samsung executives had been focused on proving the charges of embezzlement, for which statute of limitations is 10 years should the amount of stashed funds exceed 5 billion won.

However, the prosecution said in Wednesday's announcement that it failed to find evidence to counter the claims by Samsung that the political funds were financed individually by group chairman Lee Kun-hee and not drawn from company coffers.

``Under the principles of the local privacy law, we could not use the `X-files' audiotapes as evidence, and it was difficult to obtain other evidence to counter Samsung's claim. And our options were limited since the illegal political funding incident happened eight years ago and the statute of limitations for such crimes had expired,'' said Hwang.

The prosecution had confirmed in an investigation in 1998 that Samsung executives relayed 4 to 5 billion won to the camp of Lee Hoi-chang, then presidential candidate of the Grand National Party (GNP) ahead of the 1997 elections.

The reported conversations on the spy agency's audiotapes also hint that Samsung had attempted to channel 3 billion won in slush funds to Kim Dae-jung, the presidential candidate of the Millennium Democratic Party (MDP).

The prosecution summoned Samsung vice chairman Lee in August and Hong, who stepped down as ambassador in September, last month for questioning. However, both men denied the bribery allegations stemming from the MBC audiotapes. The prosecution did not summon Samsung chairman Lee and interviewed him only through correspondence.

At the beginning of their investigation, the prosecution had expressed reluctance in using the MBC audiotapes as evidence against Samsung, as it was produced through the spy agency's illegal operations.

However, the civic group People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) filed a request with the prosecution in July 25 to investigate 20 current and former Samsung executives over their alleged corrupt ties with politicians, including former ambassador Hong and group chairman Lee, making it difficult for investigators to avoid the issue.

The ``X-file Coordination Committee,'' a joint body of 108 civic groups including the PSPD, criticized the prosecution's investigation results on the wiretapping scandal and called for the establishing of an independent council to push further probe into Samsung's slush funds allegations.