By Kim Yon-se, Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporters
The presidential office will sue Lee Myung-bak, presidential candidate of the opposition Grand National Party (GNP), and three other key post-holders of the party this week for libel. It is the first time in the nation's constitutional history for the presidential office to charge a leading opposition candidate with a crime.
Moon Jae-in, chief presidential secretary for President Roh Moo-hyun, said Wednesday that Cheong Wa Dae has decided to file a libel suit against the former Seoul mayor for his allegedly groundless statement that the presidential office was behind a recent plot to frustrate his presidential bid.
He said President Roh endorsed the litigation, meaning that the incumbent head of state is to sue the leading opposition presidential nominee.
The three GNP lawmakers facing the suit are Reps. Lee Jae-oh, Ahn Sang-soo and Park Kye-dong.
The chief presidential secretary criticized Lee and the GNP for having made protest visits to the National Tax Service (NTS), the Prime Minister's Office and the National Intelligence Service (NIS) in their ``political maneuvering to portray Cheong Wa Dae as the mastermind of the plot to foil the GNP candidate's presidential bid.''
He said the Roh administration has never attempted to abuse state agencies to manipulate the presidential election process, adding that it was the GNP who performed political manipulation and surveillance in the past when they were in power.
Moon denied that Cheong Wa Dae had instructed the state agencies to meddle in the presidential election.
Presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-seon said the suit will be filed either Thursday or Friday.
The reaction came after the GNP requested prosecutors to investigate the NTS chief and two other ranking officials.
The party said the prosecutors' office should look into whether or not their activities involved professional misconduct.
In a statement, the party claimed that Jeon Goon-pyo, the head of the NTS, and two other officials committed an act of professional misconduct by directing their subordinates to monitor real estate dealings of the GNP presidential nominee and his relatives.
The NTS investigated land deals by Lee and his relatives from August to October last year and compiled detailed memos of the dealings.
Lee was furious over the tax service's involvement in what the GNP called political surveillance.
``It was a politically motivated probe designed to get the presidential candidate in trouble,'' Na Kyung-won, the spokeswoman of the GNP, said.
The GNP said that accessing the NTS database in an effort to trace citizens' land deals is not a job requirement of government employees working for the tax service. These employees were forced into misconduct by their boss, it said.
``It is evident that the tax service chief and two officials leaked the classified information that they obtained to the outside and inappropriately used the information for willful purposes,'' the statement said.
In addition to the legal action, a group of GNP lawmakers said they will visit Cheong Wa Dae to protest against the presidential office's alleged involvement in the so-called ``Lee Myung-bak Team'' run by the NIS.
The GNP lawmakers said the spy agency had run the clandestine team for political surveillance of the presidential nominee and it reported to the presidential office on a regular basis.
Cheong Wa Dae denied the allegation and said it will not allow the opposition lawmakers to visit the presidential office.