The ruling party‘s leading presidential hopeful Park Geun-hye has sued the floor leader of the main opposition party for libel over allegations of Park’s possible involvement in a massive bribery scandal related to a suspended savings bank, officials said Tuesday.

The suit came after Rep. Park Jie-won of the Democratic United Party (DUP) claimed last week Park Geun-hye met with a key lobbyist for the now-suspended Busan Savings Bank on several occasions, calling on the prosecution to investigate possible irregularities in the course of those meetings.

The presidential hopeful also sued a confidant of the lobbyist and two co-hosts of the political satire program “Naneun Ggomsuda" for making similar allegations on the show, said an official close to Park Geun-hye.

“They are repeatedly spreading false information, so we took action to correct that,” the official told Yonhap News Agency in a phone interview, declining to be named.

Park Geun-hye has denied any ties to the lobbyist, Park Tae-kyu.

She filed the suit with the Seoul Central District Prosecutor‘s Office on Monday.

Despite a shared last name, the presidential hopeful, the opposition floor leader and the lobbyist are not related.

The lobbyist was sentenced in December to two and a half years in prison for taking 1.7 billion won (US$1.46 million) in bribes from Busan Savings Bank in exchange for lobbying influential government officials to help the bank avoid regulatory punishment.

The bank’s operation was eventually suspended by financial regulators early last year due to management irregularities and a lack of capital. (Yonhap News)