Prosecutors raided the office of a high-ranking official of the Lotte Foundation in Seoul Tuesday as part of their bribery investigation into the foundation‘s chairperson Shin Young-ja.

Through the raid, prosecutors were able to seize computer hard drives and documents from the foundation at the Lotte building in Seoul. The raid was limited to the office of a high-ranking foundation executive, who is known to be a close adviser to Shin. 


Shin, the eldest daughter of Lotte Group founder Shin Kyuk-ho, is accused of accepting kickbacks from the now-disgraced former chief of cosmetics brand Nature Republic for in exchange for bringing the brand into Lotte’s duty-free outlets.

Allegations against Shin say that she received up to 1.5 billion won ($1.28 million) in bribes from former Nature Republic CEO Jung Woon-ho through a retail consulting company owned by her son.

Shin’s own home and the offices of Hotel Lotte’s duty-free operations were raided on June 2, as well as the offices of her son’s company BNF Trading.

However, prosecutors suspected that potential evidence was destroyed ahead of the raid. According to news reports, prosecutors have obtained more concrete evidence during Tuesday’s raid of Lotte Foundation to support their claims against Shin.

Meanwhile, the CEO of BNF Trading, surnamed Lee, was charged Tuesday with destruction of evidence. According to prosecutors, Lee is suspected of instructing employees to delete information from his company‘s servers and computer hard drives in anticipation of a prosecutors’ raid.

Prosecutors are expected to bring in chairperson Shin Young-ja as early as this week for questioning.

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)