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March 11, 2008
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| A former employee of Kim Kyung-joon, the one-time business partner of President Lee Myung-bak currently on trial for fraud related to the failed BBK financial company, said yesterday his boss had attempted to pay him in return for favorable testimony in a U.S. court. The 33-year-old man, who once worked at Kim’s companies, BBK and Optional Ventures, appeared yesterday as a prosecution witness at Kim’s trial session in the Seoul Central District Court. The man said he was offered $1 million in return for his testimony but refused to do so. “In 2004, the boyfriend of Erica Kim [Kim’s older sister] said I would be given $1 million if I testified before a U.S. court in favor of Kim, but I rejected the offer,” he said. “Offering me such a large sum means that I would have to commit perjury, and I thought the request was suspicious.” Before Kim’s extradition to Korea in November last year, the witness was convicted of forging U.S. passports and business documents used to establish a corporation in September 2003. He was ordered to serve one year in prison. Asked by the prosecution if he had rejected the offer because he did not want to be involved with Kim any more, the witness said, “Yes.” He said the forgery had been ordered by Kim. “Names of professors from a U.S. university where I graduated and names of actors who appeared in a movie called ‘Boiler Room’ were used to forge the documents,” the witness said. Kim had earlier said that Lee was the actual owner of BBK and the beneficiary of the fraud, but prosecutors have fully cleared Lee of any involvement in the scandal. Kim faces a series of stock manipulation, forgery and embezzlement charges. He has pleaded not guilty and claimed prosecutors are conducting a “political probe.” Prosecutors suspected in February that the National Intelligence Service, during the last months of the Roh Moo-hyun administration, might have been involved in the return of Kim to Korea in order to discredit Lee ahead of the election. On Friday, a cellmate of Kim’s from a Los Angeles detention facility is expected to testify about the allegation that Kim’s sister, politicians and spy agency officials planned Kim’s return, which dogged Lee until just before his inauguration on Feb. 25. By Ser Myo-ja Staff Reporter/ Park Sung-woo JoongAng Ilbo [myoja@joongang.co.kr] |
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