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| Jeong Jin-sang, a vice chief of staff to Democratic Party Chairman Lee Jae-myung, enters the Seoul Central District Court on Nov. 18. Yonhap |
One of the main opposition leader's closest confidants was arrested Saturday on charges connected to a high-profile real estate development scandal, a move that suggests the investigation is closing in on Lee.
The Seoul Central District Court granted an arrest warrant for Jeong Jin-sang, a vice chief of staff to Democratic Party (DP) Chairman Lee Jae-myung. Jeong is known as Lee's "right-hand man."
Jeong is under suspicion of taking about 140 million won (US$104,000) between 2013 and 2020 from real estate developers at the center of the corruption scandal in exchange for business favors for the project pushed for in Seongnam, south of Seoul, when Lee was its mayor.
Jeong accused the prosecution of fabricating charges against him, claiming the current prosecution's investigation is worse than those carried out when the past military-backed authoritarian governments were in power.
Jeong had served as a senior policy secretary to Lee while he served as the Seongnam mayor and then the governor of Gyeonggi Province surrounding Seoul.
Jeong is known as one of Lee's two closest aides, along with Kim Yong, deputy head of the DP's Institute for Democracy think tank, who was indicted last week on charges of receiving hundreds of millions of won in illegal political funds from the property developers.
Jeong is also facing suspicions that he was promised a 24.5 percent stake worth 42.8 billion won in the lucrative development project in the Daejang-dong district of Seongnam, in return for business favors given to the real estate developers, including Kim Man-bae.
Charges against him also include destruction of evidence for telling Yoo Dong-gyu, former acting president of Seongnam Development Corp. and a key suspect in the development scandal, to throw his mobile phone out the window when prosecutors raided his home in September last year. (Yonhap)
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