Three LH Bid Rigging Review Committee Members Appear for Warrant Hearing...Remain Silent

Three evaluation committee members accused of accepting large bribes during the bidding review process for apartment construction project management services (supervision) commissioned by Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) are on the verge of being detained.

Seoul Central District Court, Seocho-dong, Seoul. Photo by Moon Honam munonam@

Nam Cheon-gyu, the judge in charge of warrants at the Seoul Central District Court, is conducting a detention hearing (pre-arrest interrogation) from 10:30 a.m. on the 18th for public enterprise employee A and private university professors B and C, who are suspected of violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes (bribery).

A and the others, who appeared at the court around 10 a.m. that day, headed to the courtroom without responding to reporters' questions such as "Do you admit to receiving bribes?", "Did you give different evaluation scores depending on the amount of bribes?", and "Is it true that you incited bribery competition among companies?"

According to the prosecution, A is suspected of receiving a 30 million won bribe from a company representative participating in the supervision bidding commissioned by LH around January 2020 in exchange for favorable evaluation. B is charged with receiving 30 million won as an evaluation fee from another bidding company representative around March 2022 and separately pocketing 20 million won from a competing company representative. C is under investigation for receiving a total of 80 million won in bribes in two installments from another bidding company representative between March and May 2022.

The prosecution believes that they received money from both competing companies or incited competition among companies to offer higher amounts, awarding scores so that the company offering more money could win the bid.

Since August last year, the prosecution has been investigating allegations of collusion worth hundreds of billions of won among participating companies in construction project management service bids commissioned by LH and the Public Procurement Service (PPS), violating the Fair Trade Act.

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