SPECULATIONS OVER KIM & DEUTSCH MOTORS

[Anchor Lead]

There were allegations that Yoon Suk-yeol’s wife Kim Keon-hee engaged in a scheme to manipulate the stock price of Deutsch Motors. Yoon’s camp has denied the allegations, saying that Kim had nothing to do with the manipulation, although she traded the car dealer’s stocks. But a KBS report shows that Kim’s account was used for multiple stock transactions while the stock price manipulation was taking place. Prosecutors regarded this as evidence backing charges against the accused.

[Pkg]

The key point of the Deutsch Motors scandal is that its chairman Kwon Oh-soo manipulated its stock price to drive it up four-fold. A 2013 police report shows that Kim Keon-hee was involved in the stock price manipulation. According to the report, Kim was introduced by Kwon to a stock price manipulator surnamed Lee and entrusted him with a Shinhan Securities account holding one billion won to participate as an investor in the manipulation scheme. Last October, Yoon Suk-yeol denied the allegations and made public the transaction details of Kim’s stock account. Yoon’s camp explained that Kim entrusted her account to Lee in January 2010. But she broke off ties with him since May of that year and did not trade the Deutsch Motor stocks.

[Soundbite] Yoon Hee-seok(PR aide for Yoon Suk-yeol(Oct. 2021, TBS)) : "The stock price manipulation took place in 2011 and 2012. Kim did not trade stocks during the period. There were no transactions."

KBS reviewed records of the investigation into the Deutsch Motors scandal. It was found that the car dealer’s stocks were actively traded through Kim’s accounts after May. But the transactions were made through accounts with other securities companies like DS, Daeshin and Mirae Asset, notthe Shinhan account revealed by Yoon’s camp. The KBS team identified some 40 transactions that had occurred between October 2010 and March 2011. All of these are part of the stock price manipulation scheme discovered by the prosecutors. The manipulation was conducted via a fraudulent secret agreement between sellers and purchasers, which made it look as if the company’s stocks were traded briskly. Prosecutors believed that Kim had traded the stocks to and from her mother Choi Eun-soon or made transactions between her accounts. The People Power Party’s campaigning headquarters says there is objective evidence to the previous explanation that Kim entrusted her account to Lee for four months but later retrieved it after suffering losses. It also added stock transactions during the period in question were not related to the stock price manipulation. The headquarters explained that Kim had never co-plotted and engaged in stock price manipulation and that she is not even listed in the arraignment against those accused of the charges.