SEOUL: The brother of South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak appeared before a special prosecutor yesterday over alleged irregularities in a project to build the president’s retirement home.
Lee Sang-Eun, 79, was called to testify about a 600m won ($542,000) loan he gave to his nephew and the president’s only son, Lee Si-Hyung.
“I’ll explain everything in there,” Lee, the eldest of the president’s two brothers, told reporters before entering the prosecutor’s office in southern Seoul.
The case centres around the joint purchase last year by the president’s son and the presidential security service of a plot of land on the southern edge of the capital for a now-scrapped retirement home project.
As well as a house for the president, who leaves office at the beginning of next year, the site would have included facilities for security personnel. But the cost was allegedly not split evenly, with suggestions that the security service paid too high a price for its share, while Lee’s son got a below-market rate for the residential plot.
Lee Si-Hyung testified before the special prosecutor last week.
Nepal offers $300 bounty for leopard
KATHMANDU: Nepal offered a bounty yesterday for anyone who could hunt down a leopard that has killed more than a dozen people in the past year in the country’s remote western region.
The 25,000-rupee ($300) prize, several months’ wages for the average Nepali, will go to anyone who can bring in the animal dead or alive, after more than 100 police failed to capture it.
“In the beginning, we wanted to capture it alive. But the security personnel who returned from the search said that thousands of villagers have been terrorised,” said Hariraj Bista, a local government official in Baitadi district.
Villagers were scared to venture out of their homes after dark in the leopard’s hunting ground on the banks of the Mahakali river, Bista said.Agencies
