South Korean police arrested on Saturday the man considered to be the right-hand man of the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung, on suspicion of corruption in a real estate scandal.
The arrest followed a warrant issued by the Seoul Central District Court against Jeong Jin Sang, Lee’s deputy chief of staff and suspected of receiving some 100,000 euros between 2013 and 2020 from real estate developers.
This money would be at the center of a corruption scandal in exchange for business favors for the project promoted in Seongnam, south of Seoul, when Lee was its mayor. At the time, Jeong served as chief secretary of the mayor’s office.
Jeong, according to the official South Korean news agency Yonhap, has accused the prosecution of fabricating the charges and accused state lawyers of behaving in an authoritarian manner «like when the military was in power» during the 1960s.
