Prosecutors: "Will Continue Investigations into Other 'Bribery Allegation' Suspects"
The representative of a company accused of giving or receiving bribes in the bidding process for selecting construction supervision companies for apartments managed by Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) and a review committee member have been indicted while in custody.
The Fair Trade Investigation Division of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office (Chief Prosecutor Yong Seong-jin) announced on the 14th that they have indicted Kim, the representative of the supervision company, and Joo, a former national university professor who participated as a bidding review committee member, while in custody.
Kim is accused of bribery for requesting favorable scores from Heo, a national university professor who was a review committee member, during the construction project management service bidding issued by the Public Procurement Service from June to October 2022, and providing a total of 25 million KRW in cash on two occasions.
Joo is accused of receiving 60 million KRW from supervision company representative A from August 2020 to January 2021, and 10 million KRW from another supervision company representative B. Joo faces charges of bribery under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes and bribery under the Criminal Act.
Initially, the prosecution requested an arrest warrant only for the charge that Joo received 60 million KRW from A, but during the investigation, additional charges were discovered and included in the indictment.
Kim and Joo were detained on the 27th of last month. However, the court dismissed the arrest warrant for Heo, who was also subject to an arrest warrant request, stating, "Considering the collected evidence, the suspect's residence, and attitude during testimony, it is difficult to recognize the necessity and grounds for detention."
The prosecution plans to clarify the charges against Heo, A, B, and others through additional investigations. The prosecution stated, "We plan to conduct a swift and strict investigation according to law and principles on other suspects involved in bribery allegations confirmed so far."
Since August last year, the prosecution has been investigating allegations of collusion worth hundreds of billions of KRW in the bidding for supervision services for apartment construction projects, including Happy Housing districts, issued by LH and the Public Procurement Service.
During this process, they detected circumstances where about ten review committee members who participated in the evaluation received money and goods from companies and were involved in the awarding of contracts to those companies.
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