Prosecutors said Tuesday they will no longer pursue a malpractice charge against former president Lee Myung-bak for allegedly giving preferential treatment to an Australian infrastructure investment firm while serving as Seoul mayor.
In a complaint filed with the prosecution in 2012, a local civic group alleged that Lee had allowed Macquarie Korea Infrastructure Fund (MKIF), the second-largest shareholder of Seoul subway line 9 at the time of his mayorship, to put an excessively high price tag on the service at the expense of residents’ convenience.
Lee had also let the firm get away with no risk taking by obliging the city to cover certain amounts of losses each year, the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice said in the complaint.
As a result, the city has accrued losses of 126.7 billion won (US$120.4 million) in the four years since the subway line began operations in 2009, the group argued.
Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, however, found the deal between the city and the investment firm to not be as one-sided as the group had claimed.
While the city allowed the company to set a relatively expensive fare of 1,000 won at the time of negotiations in 2005, it also halved the period of minimum revenue guarantee to 15 years and set the guaranteed rate of returns to decrease over time, the office said.
The former president has faced multiple accusations leveled by local civic groups since leaving office in February 2013.
Prosecutors have found him not guilty of irregularities in purchasing a plot of land in southern Seoul for a private home, but he still faces charges of inflicting massive losses on the state in a botched attempt at refurbishing the nation’s four major rivers during his presidency. (Yonhap)
