Seungri of the popular boy group BIGBANG denied drug use and sex-for-favors allegations during a questioning, police said Thursday.
An investigation team of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency sent him back home after grilling him overnight.
The 29-year-old singer, during the questioning, denied all suspicions surrounding him ranging from narcotics use to attempting to buy sex services for potential foreign investors.
(Yonhap)
He, in particular, stated that he never exchanged the text messages disclosed by an Internet newspaper as proof of his sex-for-favors suspicions and even has no memory of what happened that day more than three years ago.
On Tuesday, the Internet media site reported that the singer-businessman used various nightclubs in Seoul's posh Gangnam area as places for lobbying and even attempted to escort women to the foreigners in exchange for their potential investment in his businesses at one of the nightclubs.
The media disclosed conversations he allegedly exchanged with the co-founder of the company and one of its employees on the KakaoTalk mobile phone messenger service. The messages hinted that they attempted to buy sex for business favors.
But according to sources well informed of the investigation, the police have yet to secure the original version of the KakaoTalk conversations from the reporter who first broke the news of the case.
"We'll try to figure out more about the sex-for-favors suspicions," a police investigator said on condition of anonymity, noting that they have yet to launch a formal investigation into the case.
The police agency has been separately probing Burning Sun, another nightclub in Gangnam where Seungri was a public relations director, over allegations of narcotics use, sexual assaults, violence and corrupt ties with district police.
The police plan to question Seungri and more people allegedly involved in the suspicions after closely looking into what the singer stated.
They have taken urine and hair samples from the singer and sent them to the National Forensic Service for drug tests.
Seungri complied with the authority's request to submit the samples but denied drug use allegations. (Yonhap)
