SEOUL-- The state anti-corruption investigative body on Friday raided the office of an opposition lawmaker in a widening probe into a political meddling scandal allegedly involving ex-Prosecutor General and leading presidential contender Yoon Seok-youl.
A team of prosecutors and investigators from the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) searched the office of Rep. Kim Woong of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) at the National Assembly in western Seoul earlier in the morning.
Another office of Kim in his constituency in the Songpa ward in southern Seoul and his residence were also subject to the search.
Kim has been pinpointed as a key man in the snowballing suspicions that Yoon, while serving as prosecutor general, prodded the main opposition party to lodge criminal complaints against pro-government figures ahead of the parliamentary elections in April last year to possibly influence the polls.
The suspicions emerged on Thursday last week when online news outlet Newsverse reported a ranking prosecution official close to Yoon provided the party with two letters of official complaints to be filed against three pro-government figures and several other journalists just ahead of the elections via Rep. Kim, a prosecutor-turned-lawmaker.
Yoon resigned from office in March this year and joined the PPP as the front-running conservative presidential contender.
At around the same time in the morning, the CIO also launched a search into the office and the house of Son Jun-sung, currently human rights supervisor at the High Prosecutors Office in the southern city of Daegu, who is reported to have conveyed the letters in question to Kim while serving as chief investigation intelligence official under Yoon.
"Having booked those who are involved, we opened the investigation today in order to get to the bottom of the allegations," a CIO official said.
The Supreme Prosecutors Office, which is conducting an internal probe into the case, later told reporters in a press release that it will cooperate with the probe if such a request is made by the CIO.
"(In addition), the office plans to go ahead with the fact-finding effort within a scope that does not overlap with the CIO's probe," the press release said.
Yoon has flatly dismissed the scandal as a ruling party-led "political plot" to derail his candidacy. But the scandal has been roiling his campaign as it braces for the PPP's primary to pick its sole candidate to run in the March 9 presidential election.
Led by floor leader Rep. Kim Gi-hyeon, a group of PPP lawmakers visited Kim's office under search and protested the probe as designed to crack down on the opposition party.
"Having dragged its feet on matters raised by the opposition party, (CIO) is moving like lightning to conduct a raid on an issue raised by the ruling party side," Kim protested, saying the raid on the lawmaker is "a serious act of persecuting the opposition party."
As the CIO broadens its investigation into the case, the investigators will likely try to determine whether the national prosecution service under Yoon played a role in the delivery of the controversial documents to the main opposition party.
The identity of the documents' author and whether the opposition party took advantage of them to file an official complaint against a pro-government figure in August last year are also the main focus of attention.
Source: Yonhap News Agency