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Prime Minister candidate Han Deok-soo, while serving as a public official, lent his detached house to an American conglomerate and received hundreds of millions of won in rent, creating a so-called conflict of interest.

However, it has been confirmed that an American company that rented a candidate's house with a public company under the ministry during his time as vice minister of trade and industry signed a private contract of more than 10 billion won.



This is an exclusive report by reporter Koh Jung-hyun. 



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A three-story detached house owned by candidate Han Deok-soo located in Jongno-gu, Seoul. 



It is known that one candidate leased this house to 'Mobile Oil Korea', a subsidiary of Mobil, an American energy company, for 4 years from September 1995 and received about 300 million won. 



However, in March 1996, when a candidate was the head of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Mobil EHS, another subsidiary of Mobil, signed a first-order service related to the safety management five-year development plan with Korea Gas Corporation under the Ministry of Trade and Industry. 



A year and two months later, when a candidate was a vice-minister, KOGAS and Mobil signed an additional implementation service contract worth 13.3 billion won in Hanwha at the time. 



Controversy over preferential treatment arose over this contract. 



At the National Gas Corporation audit, Park Kwang-tae, a member of the National Assembly for New Politics, argued that "analysis shows that KOGAS manipulated the evaluation results through unfair and unjust methods in order to provide services to Mobile EHS." 



Before KOGAS employees went on overseas training trips according to the proposal of Mobil EHS, KOGAS did not even have a business plan internally, and the contract method was a private contract rather than a competitive bidding. 



[Kim Hoe-jae / Democratic Party Member: It is really difficult to understand that a large contract (13.3 billion won) was concluded as a private contract rather than a bid contract.

Whether the Ministry of Trade and Industry has been involved...

.] 



Regarding the connection between the rental of the house and the Mobil EHS contract, one candidate denied that the lease was entrusted to the real estate and was not involved in any way. 



He also countered that it was speculation that the Vice Minister of Trade and Industry was also involved in the affairs of affiliated organizations. 



(Video coverage: Kim Heung-gi and Jeon Gyeong-bae, Video editing: Won Yang)