Kim Young-wan Filed Robbery Reports Separately

Kim Young-wan is found to have reported the securities authority on April 3 last year, three days after the robbery, about 443 housing bonds worth 3.9 billion won, which can be traced, among the robbed bonds. However, he was known to have filed a robbery report to the authority after eight months about his securities finance bonds (bearer bonds), which cannot be traced.

According to the related authorities such as Korea Securities Depository on July 1, it was confirmed that Kim had reported about the housing bonds on April 3 and received a court decision with respect to lost securities barring any holder`s title (Ausschlussurteil).

Kim, however, belatedly filed a theft report of the securities finance bonds worth 3.73 billion won on Dec. 3. Accordingly, a businessman, who bought some of the bonds worth 1.75 billion won without knowing about the robbery, is filing a civil lawsuit against Kim.

As a result, the money that Kim used to buy the bonds is very likely to have been provided in a secret manner and he attempted to prevent the housing bonds from being distributed in order to keep the source of the money in secret, finance experts analyzed.

“In the case of bearer bonds, one should tell the bond number, face value and the place of purchase, to file a report. And there were no such reports on the bonds worth 3.7 billion won around April last year,” said an official of Korea Securities Finance Corporation. “When he reported the robbery to us in last December, he submitted the court judgment as an evidence,” he added.

“Probably Kim had knew that he should tell where he bought the bonds, and put off reporting until the court ruling came out to use it instead,” said experts.

Housing and securities finance bonds are both bearer bonds. Housing bonds, however, can be traced more easily than securities finance bonds, which are complete bearer bonds, in that the former reveals the first buyer and the end seller in real names and should be endorsed by those involved.

jameshuh@donga.com jaykim@donga.com