Supreme Court Chief Justice Lee Yong-hun on Monday denied allegations that the repeated court rejections of an arrest warrant request for a Lone Star executive was partly due to his business links with the official.
Rep. Park Se-hwan of the Grand National Party (GNP) noted during a parliamentary interpellation session last Friday that Lee was part of the defense for Korea Exchange Bank in its multi-million-dollar lawsuit against a gas corporation in June last year, before he assumed the current post two months later.
The lawmaker claimed the chief justice's private ties with Yoo Hoe-won, head of Lone Star's Seoul office, and top executives of the KEB might have influenced recent court decisions to disallow the arrest of Yoo on charges of stock manipulation. Lone Star is the largest shareholder of the Korean lender.
Yoo, a South Korean national, is suspected of taking a leading role in manipulating the stock price of KEB's credit card arm in November 2003 ahead of the card company's merger with the bank.
Yoo was also charged with embezzlement, tax evasion and breach of trust.
In a news briefing, the top court said Lee accepted 220 million won (US$235,180) in deposit money after signing a contract with KEB. The chief justice, however, returned most of the money after he was named to the current post in August that year, according to Byeon Hyeon-cheol, spokesman for the court.
"Lee took only 55 million won as payment for his two months of work," Byeon added.
Lee also denied his alleged ties with Yoo, saying "I don't even remember whether Yoo accompanied KEB executives when I came to meet them for the contract and have since had no chance to form such a relationship."
The suspicion came in the middle of a renewed conflict between judges and prosecutors over the former's use of stricter criteria in issuing arrest warrants to prevent the abuse of human rights.
On Thursday, the Seoul Central District Court rejected the prosecution's fourth request for issuing an arrest warrant against Yoo after turning down three previous applications.
The court said more convincing reasons are needed to arrest him.
But prosecutors claimed they already provided enough evidence to prove charges against Yoo and blasted the court for using "inconsistent" criteria for issuing warrants.
Prosecutors filed a "quasi-complaint" against the court decision. The Seoul court will soon decide whether to accept the complaint or not.
The prosecution has threatened to take Yoo's case to the Supreme Court if their demand is rejected again. The conflict came to the surface last September when the chief justice bluntly asked judges to "throw away" investigation records by prosecutors, saying testimonies collected by prosecutors "behind closed doors" should not outweigh statements made during trials.
His outspoken remarks triggered a strong backlash from prosecutors with Prosecutor-general Choung Sang-myoung formally expressing regret over the remarks.
Prosecutors claim judges have largely been uncooperative with their work by rejecting nearly 27 percent of warrants sought by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office between January and September this year. The rate was below 10 percent in past years, they said.
Seoul, Nov. 20 (Yonhap News)
Chief justice denies alleged ties with Lone Star executive |
