South Korean investigators have raided the headquarters of industrial giant Samsung and the national pension fund as a part of a deepening corruption investigation into President Park Geun-hye and her links to a shamanistic adviser that threatens her administration.
Investigators are seeking to discover whether Ms Park pressured the fund to support a merger in return for Samsung giving money to confidante Choi Soon-sil, who is accused of using her close relationship with Ms Park to obtain influence and funds.
The scandal has led to increasingly loud calls for Ms Park’s resignation, and has fuelled talk of impeachment, but the president insists the allegations are “imagination and conjecture”.
The raid is connected to the merger last year of Samsung's construction unit Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries.
The prosecutors suspect that in order to smooth the course of the merger, Samsung was pressured to give 3.5 billion won (€2.8 million) to a company in Germany owned by Ms Choi and her daughter, Chung Yoo-ra, as a consultancy fee, to fund Ms Chung's dressage training, local media reported.
In a bizarre turn in an already odd story, the president's office confirmed that her office bulk-purchased erectile dysfunction drug Viagra, but insisted it was for a high-altitude trip to Ethiopia. The little blue pills also worked against altitude sickness, a spokesman said.
Questions about drugs keep coming up. Reporters also sought a response to rumours that Ms Park was under anaesthetic and undergoing plastic surgery during the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster which left more than 300 passengers dead or missing.
Her office dismissed the rumours, saying Ms Park carried out her official duties during the tragic event.
Spokesman Jung Youn-kuk said that the etomidate-lipuro injections – intravenous anaesthetics – it had purchased were carried by medical staff at all times.
State prosecutors are urging the president to answer questions related to the corruption scandal, which has seen hundreds of thousands of Koreans taking to the streets for the past four weekends calling for her to step down.
Mandate
She is unlikely to do so in much of a hurry, as she is immune from prosecution as sitting president.
The prosecutors have said that Ms Park was an “accomplice” in a series of the alleged wrongdoings involving Choi Soon-sil and two former presidential secretaries.
Ms Choi is alleged to have pressured several of South Korea’s largest “chaebols” – industrial conglomerates – into donating billions of won into two funds run by her, and also of having unlawful access to presidential speeches and documents, some of them classified.
In a separate investigation, Ms Park is due to face an independent counsel investigation, which will be appointed by the main opposition Democratic Party and the minor People's Party.
“We believe balanced and neutral figures will be selected to carry out the investigation,” the presidential spokesman, was quoted as saying.
The team will be made up of 105 investigators, including 20 prosecutors, and it has a mandate to investigate the scandal for up to four months. It is expected to begin its work in December.
