Prosecutors said Wednesday they are looking into a fresh allegation that a former director of the state intelligence agency misappropriated a huge sum of the agency's money for overseas intelligence operations for private purposes.

Won Sei-hoon, who led the National Intelligence Service (NIS) from 2009-2013 during the reign of conservative President Lee Myung-bak, is currently behind bars for running an online smear campaign against left-leaning politicians in the runup to the 2012 presidential election. Then conservative candidate Park Geun-hye won the election by a thin margin.

On Wednesday, prosecutors raided a state think tank under the NIS and Won's prison cell to obtain accounting documents and private memos for an investigation into the allegation.

The Seoul prosecution took from the NIS materials showing that Won had instructed US$2 million from the agency's fund for overseas operations to be sent to Stanford University in the U.S. from late 2011 to early 2012, when he served as the agency's director.

The money allegedly was sent to a research institute at the university through the Institute for National Security Strategy.

Prosecutors suspect that he may have forced the agency to donate the money to secure a seat as a research fellow at the U.S.research center after his retirement in 2013.

"His trip to the United States was canceled after he was banned from leaving the country in 2013 due to the investigation into the NIS online smear campaign, but we understand the money remained with Stanford University," said a prosecution official with knowledge of the probe. 

Prosecutors see chances that he may have embezzled money in addition to the $2 million to purchase a house in the U.S.They plan to call in the former NIS director to question him about the remittance as soon as they finish analyzing the obtained materials. (Yonhap)