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Chief Justice Lee Yong-hun has admitted giving cash in the form of dining expenses or thank-you gifts to 10 judges when he worked as a lawyer between 2000 and 2005, it emerged Sunday. The beans were spilled by the former senior judge Cho Kwan-haeng, who was arrested for corruption. He told the Inspector General for Judicial Ethics of the Supreme Court in mid-June last year that the chief justice paid W1 million (US $1=W934) to judges as thank-you gifts after cases went in his favor when he was a lawyer. Cho tried to blackmail prosecutors by threatening to implicate the chief justice if they probed Cho¡¯s bank accounts.
Briefed by his chief secretary Kim Jong-hoon, the chief justice reportedly said he gave Cho W300,000 in cash when the latter visited him in his law office after being promoted to senior judge in the High Court, and admitted doing the same for some 10 other judges. Cho was promoted in February 2005.
But prosecutors say it was not Cho who went to Lee¡¯s office but the other way round, and the sum was W1-3 million. They want to investigate the matter further. In corruption scandals in Uijeongbu in 1997 and in Daejeon in 1998, judges who received more than W1 million in cash gifts without being asked to do anything in return had to resign, while those who got less than W1 million were demoted or faced disciplinary measures. The code of judicial ethics as revised in June 1998, right after the two cases, strictly bans cash thank-you gifts. The overwhelming feeling in judicial circles is that prosecutors should investigate the matter and those involved should be punished.
A few officials with the Supreme Court allegedly approached three or four senior prosecutors around June 20, when prosecutors embarked on their investigation of Cho, in a bid to stop them. The senior prosecutors confirm they were approached by court officials who asked them to hand their evidence over to the Supreme Court, which would conduct its own investigation and take ¡°appropriate measures.¡±
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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