'5 Billion Club' Park Young-soo, Re-arrested on Warrant... The Fall of a 'Successful Special Prosecutor' (Summary)

Park Young-soo, the former special prosecutor (71) who investigated the Park Geun-hye administration's 'state affairs manipulation' scandal and was once regarded as the 'most successful special prosecutor,' has been detained following the prosecution's reapplication for an arrest warrant.

According to the legal community on the 4th, Yoon Jae-nam, the judge in charge of warrants at the Seoul Central District Court, conducted a pre-arrest detention hearing (warrant substantive examination) for former Special Prosecutor Park the day before and issued an arrest warrant citing "concerns over evidence destruction."

The key suspect in the 'Daejang-dong 5 Billion Club' case, former special prosecutor Park Young-soo, is attending the pre-arrest hearing held at the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho-gu, Seoul on the 3rd. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

Accordingly, Park, who was once revered as a 'national hero,' has lost his prestige, bearing the disgrace of becoming the first 'special prosecutor suspect to be detained' about two years after his dishonorable resignation in July 2021 over allegations of receiving a luxury car from a fake seafood businessman, now accused of bribery from private developers involved in the Daejang-dong urban development project, known as the '50 Billion Club' scandal.

Among the 'Daejang-dong 50 Billion Club' members, this is the second detention following former lawmaker Kwak Sang-do in February last year, and it comes just over a month after the court dismissed Park's first arrest warrant on June 30. With Park's custody secured, the prosecution has opened a new path for the previously stagnant investigation into the '50 Billion Club' and can now accelerate its future actions.

The legal community points to Park's daughter, Park Mo, who received money from Kim Man-bae's Hwacheon Daeyu Asset Management, as the reason for the court's 180-degree change in judgment within just a month. It is reported that Park Mo received a total benefit of 2.5 billion KRW under the titles of salary and loans. After the first arrest warrant was dismissed, the prosecution conducted a family search and summoned related parties to prove the actual nature of the money received by Park and his daughter. As a result, it was substantiated that Park Mo received 1.1 billion KRW in loans from Hwacheon Daeyu in five installments between September 2019 and February 2021, and the prosecution added charges of violating the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act to Park's arrest warrant request. The amount of money Park allegedly received from the Daejang-dong private developers also increased significantly from 800 million KRW to 1.9 billion KRW. The prosecution views this money as part of the 5 billion KRW promised between Park and the Daejang-dong group. The court that received the warrant application appears to have accepted the prosecution's claim that the amount of suspicious illegal money increased and that there is a risk of evidence destruction regarding the money received by Park's daughter. Additionally, unlike the first arrest warrant application, which included Park's closest aide, former special prosecutor assistant Yang Jae-sik, this time the prosecution focused solely on Park's detention, excluding Yang, a strategy that seems to have been effective. It also appears that circumstances indicating Park's active involvement in destroying evidence, such as smashing his mobile phone with a hammer during the investigation, were acknowledged.

The prosecution is also said to have further detailed the existing charges against Park. Park is accused of receiving a large sum of money and real estate in exchange for accommodating the requests of Daejang-dong private developers while serving as an outside director, chairman of the board, and audit committee member of Woori Bank from 2014 to 2015. Initially, Woori Bank considered participating as an investor in the Seongnam-e Deul consortium but ultimately decided not to join in March 2015, instead submitting a letter of intent for project financing (PF) loans amounting to 150 billion KRW. As a result, the Seongnam-e Deul consortium received near-perfect scores in the 'funding' category among private business evaluation criteria and was selected as the preferred negotiator. The prosecution believes that Park, in collusion with former assistant Yang, was promised 20 billion KRW, an unspecified plot of land, and a detached house to be built on it from Nam Wook and others in relation to the consortium's investment and issuance of the letter of intent between November and December 2014.

It was also confirmed that Park actually received 300 million KRW in cash under the pretext of election funds for the 2015 Korean Bar Association president election. Through investigations, the prosecution found that Nam delivered a total of 300 million KRW in three installments in shopping bags to Park via former assistant Yang at the election campaign office, and a significant portion of this money was paid as encouragement money to lawyers who supported the election. The prosecution also suspects that Park received 500 million KRW from Kim Man-bae and others as a bribe for the issuance of the letter of intent in March-April 2015, when Woori Bank's role was reduced, and was promised 5 billion KRW. It is alleged that Park received 500 million KRW from Kim through Daejang-dong sales agent Lee Ki-sung, then sent the money back to Kim to be used as capital increase funds for Hwacheon Daeyu, thereby securing shares in the Daejang-dong project.

The prosecution is expected to complete the investigation into Park within the 20-day detention period and indict him along with his accomplice, former assistant Yang. Attention is also focused on whether Park's detention will provide momentum for investigations into other members of the Daejang-dong 50 Billion Club, including former Supreme Court Justice Kwon Soon-il and former Prosecutor General Kim Soo-nam. A prosecution official stated, "We plan to continue sequential investigations into the raised (50 Billion Club) allegations."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.