South Korea’s Former Justice Minister indicted on bribery and tampering of evidence
7342 Mins Read
South Korean prosecutors indicted former Justice Minister Cho Kuk on Tuesday on a dozen charges including bribery, two months after he resigned over a scandal involving family investment and university admissions for his children.
The accusations are a setback for President Moon Jae-in after the liberal leader named Cho, a former top aide, to the cabinet post to lead reform of the prosecutors’ office, which critics saw as being susceptible to political pressure.
Prosecutors said a 6 million-won (US$5,183) scholarship that Cho’s daughter received from her medical school professor could be seen as a bribe considering Cho was a Cheong Wa Dae official who could influence the professor’s appointment as a public hospital chief.
They added Cho, a law professor, and his wife surnamed Chung, who’s also a university professor, inappropriately meddled in their children’s admission by forging internship certificates or asking others to issue such “fake” documents.
Investigators also took issue with the couple’s investment in a private equity fund, saying they used false-name accounts for stock investments and deliberately misreported their asset size, breaching an ethics law that binds public servants.
Cho and his wife were also charged with attempting to tamper with evidence, such as documents and a computer hard disk, as the probe progressed.
The indictment follows a probe that kicked off in August when suspicions that Cho’s family inappropriately invested in a private equity fund and intervened in the admission process of their children first surfaced.
Despite strong opposition from critics, especially from the conservative bloc, Moon appointed Cho in September, but he eventually stepped down about a month later.
In a text message Cho’s acquaintance unveiled Monday, the former minister expected the prosecution to indict him “as a new year’s gift” but pledged to “fight based on facts and legal principle.”
His attorney Kim Chil-jun sent a text message to reporters criticizing Tuesday’s move as “a political indictment based on the prosecution’s imagination and fiction.”
