On the 10th of November(KST), at dawn, an arrest warrant was issued for three people, which includes 2 former secretaries that worked under Jun Byung-Hun, who is now the Chief Secretary of Political Affairs. (The arrestees will be referred to as “Persons A, B, and C” throughout the article for legal issues.)

Previously on the 7th, the prosecutor launched an investigation into the allegations that Jun Byung Hun’s previous secretaries had been laundering the sponsorship money from Lotte. During this investigation, Person A’s home and KeSPA, which was an organization that Jun had previously been the president for, were thoroughly searched down.

Persons A, B, and the broker C were all charged on the 9th for embezzlement and money laundering. The arrest warrant was issued on the morning of the 10th.

Related Article: LCK's Host Organization, KeSPA, Under Search... Under Suspicion of Lobbying Money

The three are currently accused of laundering a portion of the money that was sponsored by ‘Lotte Home Shopping’ In 2015. At the time, Lotte Home Shopping’s broadcasting rights were being reevaluated by the ‘Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning’. Person A at the time was one of the lead staff members and had the ability to influence the result of the evaluation. The prosecution believes that Person A abused his authority to force Lotte into sponsoring.

On the other hand, Lotte Home Shopping stated that the sponsorship was given after the reevaluation, was purely a form of donation, and has no other meaning behind it. However, the prosecution is continuing the investigation as they believe that there was another reason for the canceling of the reevaluation.

Some time later, ‘Lotte Home Shopping’ revealed that they “received a request from ‘Person A’ to create an esports team to aid the growth of esports,” to which they responded, “Spending one billion won(≒ $900k) to create a gaming organization was too much to handle, so we offered to support esports by sponsoring the ‘KeSPA Cup’ with 300 million won(≒ $267k).”

The prosecution believes that ‘Person A’ laundered 110 million won(≒ $90k) out of the 300 million sponsorship money with ‘Person B’ and ‘Broker C’ by imitating a “legal business trade”. Out of the three, some have already confessed to this crime.

At the time of the crime, Jun Byung-Hun was the honorary president of KeSPA. However, the prosecution so far had found no connections between him and the illegal activities that happened in 2015.