4 LH Supervisory Bid Bribery Suspect Review Committee Members Appear for Warrant Hearing

Four screening committee members accused of accepting bribes from bidding companies during the selection process of the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) apartment supervision contractor are on the verge of being detained.

Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH). [Image source=Yonhap News]

At 10:10 a.m. on the 8th, Kim Seok-beom, the chief judge in charge of warrants at the Seoul Central District Court, is conducting a detention hearing (pre-arrest suspect interrogation) for public official A, private university professors B and C, who are accused of violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes (bribery), and quasi-government agency employee D, who is accused of accepting bribes.

The suspects, who appeared at the court around 9:40 a.m. that day, headed to the courtroom without responding to reporters' questions such as "Do you admit to giving high scores in exchange for bribes?" and "Did you actually give the lowest scores to competing companies?"

According to the prosecution, they are accused of soliciting bribes from participating companies in the LH public construction project management service bid by promising to give good scores in the evaluation and the lowest scores (commonly called 'bomb') to competing companies, and accepting bribes in return.

A, B, and C are accused of receiving 50 million won each from executives of companies participating in the March 2022 bid as payment for favorable evaluations. D is reported to have received 20 million won from a company employee.

The prosecution has been investigating suspicions of collusion worth hundreds of billions of won in the supervision service bids for apartment construction projects in Happy Housing districts ordered by LH and the Public Procurement Service since August last year.

During this process, it was discovered that about ten screening committee members involved in the evaluation received money and goods from companies and influenced the awarding of contracts to those companies. Further investigations are underway regarding those implicated in the bribery allegations.

The decision on whether to detain them is expected to be made as early as this afternoon.