A team of special prosecutors wrapped up a three-month graft probe of former aides to President Roh Moo-hyun yesterday by indicting one ex-official and clearing two others of any wrongdoing.
The team of 70 investigators empowered by parliament in December to open the investigation charged Roh's former presidential secretary for general affairs, Choi Do-sul, with accepting 491 million won (US$425,200) in illegal funds ahead of the presidential election in December 2002.
The probe cleared two others, Lee Kwang-jae and Yang Gil-seung. Both Lee, Roh's one-time secretary for information and policy monitoring, and Yang, a former personal secretary, were accused of accepting bribes from businessmen.
Choi had already been indicted and jailed on separate charges of receiving 1.1 billion won in illegal political donations from a business conglomerate, the SK Group, just after the election.
The National Assembly, controlled by the conservative Grand National Party (GNP), adopted a bill appointing the special counsel team after the three aides stepped down last year when the scandal broke out.
Roh opposed the bill but was forced to sign it after parliament overrode his veto.
Special prosecutor Kim Jin-hong said the probe came up virtually empty-handed because there was little of substance to the allegations of corruption against Roh's former aides.
"When there is simply no gold vein, you cannot dig out any gold," Kim told journalists prior to closing the probe. "We suffered greatly in chasing after a ghost that simply did not exist."
He said that evidence supplied by enemies of Roh in the GNP was faulty. One GNP lawmaker urged the special prosecutors to investigate the origin of 130 billion won worth of "mysterious" certificates of deposit (CDs).
"Later on, he told us to forget about the CDs, which had never existed," Kim said.
The special counsel probe has been carried out alongside a wider investigation of corruption surrounding the 2002 presidential race conducted by state prosecutors in which officials from all parties have been implicated.
The GNP, whose candidate Lee Hoi-chang narrowly lost to Roh in the election, is accused of raising far more than Roh's team in illegal donations from business groups.
Roh, a former human rights lawyer elected on a clean government platform, pledged to step down last year if his supporters took one tenth of the illegal funds accepted by the opposition.
Earlier this month Roh was impeached by the National Assembly and suspended from office on charges of violating electoral law, economic mismanagement and corruption. The Constitutional Court has 180 days to rule on whether to uphold the impeachment or restore Roh's executive powers.
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