Seoul, February 16 The South Korean prosecutor’s office today requested an arrest warrant for the leader of the main opposition party, Lee Jae-myung, whom it considers to be a key figure in a corruption scandal. during his tenure as mayor of a city on the outskirts of Seoul.
The prosecutor’s office today applied for the arrest warrant from a Seoul Central District Court, according to the Yonhap News Agency.
Prosecutors believe that Lee, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (PD), provided developers with whom he would be associated with inside information about municipal urban development projects during his tenure – between 2010 and 2018 – as mayor of Seongnam ( southeast of Seoul). .
This would have affected bankruptcy proceedings and resulted in profits of around 800 billion won (approximately $625 million) for the aforementioned developers.
They also accuse him of having let disappear a mechanism for distributing the profits of these projects between the town hall and private investors, allowing the latter to enrich themselves largely at the expense of the municipal coffers, which would have ceased to enter some 490 000 million won. (about $382 million).
Lee has been questioned three times in the past month – most recently on Feb. 10 – about the case and another alleged bribery scheme involving Seongnam FC, a city-owned professional soccer club.
Lee and the PD have insisted on their innocence, arguing that it is a politically motivated investigation by the office of the president, conservative Yoon Suk-yeol, who was a former state attorney general and who prevailed over the current Leader of the Opposition. in the presidential elections of May 2021 by only a few hundred thousand votes.
Even if the prosecution succeeds in obtaining the aforementioned arrest warrant, the leader of the opposition should not be able to be detained, since the law establishes that for those who have a parliamentary seat, like Lee, it is necessary to obtain a approval from the chamber for him to be executed, which is highly unlikely since the PD is in the majority in the chamber. ECE
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