People’s Party’s Rep. Kim Su-min, who is the key person of interest in the party’s corruption allegation, appeared for prosecutors’ questioning Thursday.

“There was no rebate of (any) sort. I will clarify everything with the prosecution,” the first-termer said before entering the Seoul Western District Prosecutors’ Office.

The National Election Commission reported Kim, along with two other senior party members, to prosecutors on June 8 on charges of receiving kickbacks worth 238 million won ($207,000) from companies commissioned to produce campaign materials and television commercials for the April 13 parliamentary election.

The watchdog believes the money was handed over in the form of rebates out of the 3.2 billion won they paid to the firms by having them pay back some of the money to another advertisement agency named Brand Hotel, which Kim had once headed, under false subcontracts.

The NEC has claimed that Rep. Park Sun-sook, then the party’s secretary-general who oversaw financial affairs, and Wang Joo-hyun, the deputy secretary-general, conspired with Kim. The court has since issued search warrants.

Park is scheduled to be questioned on Monday.

The prosecution was expected to zero in on what role Kim’s former company actually played and what type of service it was paid for. The party had explained that Brand Hotel was responsible for designing the party’s identity.

The prosecution is also investigating another allegation raised by the NEC that the party exaggerated the expenses spent on producing election campaign materials in their application for state reimbursement upon the election.

The NEC has reimbursed just 1.59 billion won out of the party’s reported 2.11 billion won spent on campaign materials, saying that the remaining 515 million won was deemed to have been spent excessively based on the general transaction trend.

The rebate suspicion has rattled the third-largest party headed by entrepreneur-turned-politician Rep. Ahn Cheol-soo, who has rose to political prominence with his new and clean politics mantra.

Ahn has offered a show of regret over the allegation and promised to thoroughly investigate and deal sternly with anyone responsible.

The party’s countermeasures committee for the case, chaired by professor-turned-politician Rep. Lee Sang-don said last week that based on their investigation, there was no wrongdoing and the money transacted between the commissioned companies and Brand Hotel remain in the latter’s bank account, and thus are irrelevant to the party.

Some of the People’s Party members have also contended that the prosecution’s probe was politically motivated based on false accusations raised by other subcontract companies that failed to win the bid for the party’s campaign.

(khnews@heraldcorp.com)