[Editorial] Lee Myung-bak’s fraud of 20 years finally brought to justice

Ex-president Lee Myung-bak

A South Korean court has officially recognized that the real owner of DAS is former president Lee Myung-bak. That was the conclusion reached by Hon. Jeong Gye-seon, the judge in charge of the 27th criminal division at the Seoul Central District Court, who sentenced Lee to 15 years in prison and a fine of 13 billion won (US$11.5 million) on Oct. 5. Lee had been jailed on 16 counts of embezzlement and bribery, and he was also convicted of the key charges linked to bribery by Samsung.

The day’s verdict effectively concludes the debate about who is the true owner of DAS, finally drawing the curtain on a fraud that Lee has perpetrated on the Korean public for more than 20 years, since he first entered politics. Given Lee’s sins, a sentence of 15 years cannot be regarded as adequate, but there’s no small significance in the fact that the courts have meted out punishment to a former president who never stopped trying to hoodwink the public.

“Lee was elected president despite the charges raised about DAS and BBK throughout the presidential election in 2007 and the investigations by a special prosecutor because a majority of the public believed and counted on the defendant’s protestation of innocence,” the judge said during the sentencing, which was broadcast live for nearly an hour, as he sharply criticized Lee for deceiving the people.

Since establishing DAS, Lee had not only provided all the funding and filled the key positions with his own people but had also received regular briefings on the company’s operations and siphoned off money for his own personal slush fund for nearly 20 years. The court found that Lee’s asset manager was his own brother-in-law and that the money used for a controversial purchase of land in Seoul’s Dogok neighborhood had come out of Lee’s own pocket.

Considering that Lee deceived the public during his terms as a lawmaker in the National Assembly, mayor of Seoul and president and after all his embezzlement insists even now that DAS belongs to his older brother, his shamelessness is astonishing. It’s no wonder the court said that “the defendant’s crimes are very grave considering that he was serving as a lawmaker and mayor of Seoul throughout a long period of embezzlement and other crimes as the real owner of DAS.”

It was despicable of Lee, as sitting president, to brazenly force a conglomerate to cover the legal costs of a company he controlled under a different name and to pocket bribes in exchange for seats on the National Assembly and other public offices. Not only did Lee have Samsung pay 6.1 billion won (US$5.4 million) of DAS’s legal fees, but he was also convicted of receiving 1.6 billion won (US$1.4 million) for the chairmanship of the Woori Financial Group and 400 million won (US$353,710) for a seat as a proportional representative and of taking US$100,000 in exchange for allowing someone to remain the director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS).

While Lee was acquitted of having Blue House secretaries and administrators review the DAS legal fees and the inheritance tax on property listed under another name, the court did acknowledge that he gave those orders. In effect, the sarcastic gibe that “Lee’s victory wasn’t political but financial” turns out to be not far off the mark.

Claiming that the public prosecutors’ investigation was “political retribution,” Lee refused to be questioned in jail and didn’t even appear at the sentencing on Friday. At the same time, he has shifted the blame to his associates and not given the public even one decent apology. Given Lee’s status as former president, we hope that now he will at least show a little remorse for deceiving the public about the DAS issue.

Lee did not show up to his sentencing regarding charges of embezzling from the autoparts company DAS and extorting bribes from Samsung on Oct. 5 at the Seoul Central District Court. (photo pool)

Lee’s troubles are just beginning

Lee’s troubles aren’t over, though. The prosecutors have announced that they’ve found documents in the presidential archive showing that Lee said that “these online comments are important” toward the end of 2008 and gave instructions for other organizations to “do a good job with these online comments like the NIS” before the 2012 presidential election. This stands as powerful evidence that Lee was the mastermind between the elaborate comment-posting operations not only by the NIS but also by the military cyber command and the police to influence elections.

A large number of documents related to surveillance of civilians and political manipulation have turned up at the Yeongpo Building, which was owned by Lee, in Seoul’s Seocho District. This basically means that Lee was responsible for government manipulation on a similar scale to former president Park Geun-hye. We hope that subsequent investigations will leave no stone unturned.

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