SEOUL: An independent counsel cleared President-elect Lee Myung-bak yesterday of financial fraud allegations that had clouded his rise to the country's highest office.

The announcement put an end to suspicions that Lee colluded in a 2001 stock price manipulation case, a controversy that plagued Lee throughout last year's campaign.

"The president-elect was not involved in the stock price manipulation," special prosecutor Chung Ho-young said in a televized announcement of the outcome of a 38-day investigation.

Lee had strongly denied the allegations, and state prosecutors already had acquitted him of the charges weeks before the election. But rival politicians pushed for the special probe in an apparent attempt to keep the scandal alive through the vote.

The independent counsel also cleared Lee of allegations that he had owned a tract of land in southern Seoul under another person's name and lied about it, or that he gave illicit business favors to a company while serving as Seoul's mayor from 2002-2006.

Agencies

(China Daily 02/22/2008 page11)