Prosecutors Request Arrest Warrant for Former Woori Holdings Chairman Son Tae-seung on Allegations of Unfair Loans by Relatives

Prosecutors Request Arrest Warrant for Former Woori Financial Group Chairman Sohn Tae-seung
"Involvement of KRW 40 Billion in Unfair Loans…Damage to the Bank"
Financial Supervisory Service, Woori Bank's Unfair Loan Situation...a request to the prosecution for an investigation
Prosecutors investigate for three months...Captured an additional 8 billion won in illegal loans, former Chairman Sohn denied the charges in a two-day summons investigation.

[Anchor]
Prosecutors have requested an arrest warrant for Sohn Tae-seung, former chairman of Woori Financial Group, who is accused of making unfair loans to relatives and others.

The prosecution believes that the amount of illegal loans that former chairman Sohn was involved in is more than 40 billion won.

Reporter Yoon Tae-in's report.

[Reporter]
Prosecutors have requested an arrest warrant for Sohn Tae-seung, former chairman of Woori Financial Group.

It is a charge of causing damage to Woori Bank by engaging in unfair loans of more than 40 billion won.

Earlier, the Financial Supervisory Service requested the prosecution to investigate Woori Bank after detecting that it unfairly lent about 35 billion won to former chairman Sohn's relatives and related corporations from April 2020 to January this year.

After nearly three months of investigation, the prosecution believed that there was an additional illegal loan worth 8 billion won and indicated it in the arrest warrant bill.

A prosecution official explained that former chairman Sohn was involved in a large amount of unfair loans and judged that the issue was serious, as well as the possibility of destroying evidence, such as kissing former and current officials of Woori Bank who were converted to suspects.

Prosecutors recently turned Woori Bank President Cho Byung-kyu into a suspect, believing that Woori Bank's current management did not immediately report to financial authorities even though they were aware of the unfair loan process.

However, former chairman Sohn reportedly denied most of the related charges in the prosecution's summons investigation over the previous two days.

Sohn's brother-in-law, identified only by his surname Kim, who is considered a key official in unfair loans, and former head of Woori Bank's headquarters were arrested in September and last month and put on trial.

I'm YTN Yoon Tae-in.


Video editing: Lee Ja-eun
Design: Im Sa-byul