hankyoreh

LOS ANGELES - It was billed as a tell-all event, a press conference in which Lee Bo-ra, the wife of Kim Kyung-jun, would reveal a set of contracts proving Grand National Party presidential candidate Lee Myung-bak’s involvement in the deepening BBK investment fraud case. But Lee Bo-ra merely flashed the documents and then withdrew them, casting doubt upon their authenticity and leaving the public to wonder what effect, if any, they will have on the outcome of the prosecution’s ongoing investigation.

Lee Bo-ra, the wife of Kim Kyung-jun, said, “The ‘side agreements’ signed by Kim Kyung-jun and Lee Myung-bak consist of one document written in Korean and three in English and I will send the original copies to the South Korean prosecution by November 23,” at a press conference in Los Angeles on November 21 (KST). Lee briefly showed just the cover and the last pages of the copies to those assembled.

The following day, on November 22, in a telephone interview with the MBC radio program Eye Focus, Erica Kim, the Los Angeles-based elder sister of Kim Kyung-jun, said that her mother would fly to Seoul on Friday, November 23 (KST) to submit the original copies of the documents to the prosecution. She insisted that anyone who sees the documents will know that Lee Myung-bak is the real owner of BBK, the now-defunct investment firm at the center of the scandal.

BBK is the investment management firm founded in 2000 and owned by Kim Kyung-jun before it went bankrupt in 2001. Kim is charged with manipulating stock information at BBK and Operational Ventures, a company founded in the month when BBK was having its registration cancelled by the Financial Supervisory Service, before embezzling 38.4 billion in company funds and fleeing to the United States, where he was arrested in 2004 and held until last week, when he was extradited to South Korea and arrested here on similar charges.

The prosecution is rushing to finalize its investigation into the allegations against both Kim Kyung-jun, who was extradited to South Korea last Friday, and Lee Myung-bak, before a November 24 candidate registration deadline. After that date, election law dictates that candidates cannot be indicted during the campaign.

In a telephone interview with The Hankyoreh on November 22, one of Kim’s family members said that the prosecution may not have shown the Korean language versions of the documents to witnesses for Lee Myung-bak, adding, “If we reveal the documents, they will have a significant impact.” The documents purportedly show that Lee Myung-bak is the real owner of BBK.

Prior to the launch of BBK, Kim formed a partnership with Lee Myung-bak to launch LK e-Bank, which was one of BBK’s holding companies. Kim claims that Lee is the real owner of BBK, however Lee has denied all charges and was cleared after a previous investigation conducted by the prosecution last year.

Kim’s wife raised the possibility that another company called DAS, an auto parts manufacturing firm, had invested 19 billion won in the BBK fund following a decision made by a third person. DAS is owned by Lee Myung-bak’s brother and brother-in-law, though Kim claims that Lee is the de facto owner of the company. DAS invested a total of 19 billion won in BBK, and was largely operated by LK e-Bank.

When asked about who the legitimate owner of DAS was, she replied that Kim Seong-u, the head of DAS, did not know Kim Kyung-jun well, that nobody at DAS knew about BBK before Lee Sang-eun, Lee Myung-bak’s eldest brother, and a BBK official met, and that DAS had not done research on BBK before making its investment. To support her remarks, Lee Bo-ra presented the contents of the U.S. federal prosecution’s investigation on Kim Seong-u. She also remarked that DAS had not disclosed the source of 8 billion won invested by DAS on December 28 in 2000.

In response, the attorney handling the BBK case for the Grand National Party, Koh Seung-duk, said, “DAS invested in BBK with funds raised by selling promissory notes at discount rates and we submitted the related documents to the prosecution,” adding that BBK officials visited a DAS company in Gyeongju to give a briefing on the investment.

The Seoul Central District Court said that it has requested that Kim Kyung-jun submit the original copies of the side contracts by Friday. Prosecutor Kim Hong-il said, “Kim Kyung-jun has submitted a few copies of the related documents but we told him to send the original copies in order to confirm their authenticity.”

The prosecution is expected to announce the interim results of its investigation this weekend.

Meanwhile, Kim Kyung-jun has designated Oh Jae-won as his lawyer, following the resignation of his previous lawyer, Park Su-jong, earlier this week. Oh said, “I will ask Kim Kyung-jun to open the box of documents sent by his sister Erica Kim, with whom we have had indirect contact.”

A group of minor shareholders of Optional Ventures Korea, led by Song Dong-sik, filed a complaint against Lee Bo-ra and Erica Kim for conspiring in stock price manipulation. Operational Ventures is the firm established by Lee Myung-bak in April 2001, and was one of the main venues for Kim’s stock price manipulation after the closure of BBK in the same month of that year.