Confession added to SSRT case record

Confession added to SSRT case record
By Franklin Fisher, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Thursday, November 27, 2008

PYEONGTAEK, South Korea — Former AAFES official H. Lee Holloway has confessed to federal agents that he took bribes to help a complaint-ridden Internet company keep its lucrative business on U.S. military installations in South Korea, according to documents unsealed Monday in Dallas federal court.

The bribes — including money spent on prostitutes, dining, drinking and travel — were paid or approved by South Korean businessman Jeong Gi-hwan, chief executive of Samsung Rental Corp. Ltd., also known as SSRT, according to the documents filed with U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The reference to Holloway’s alleged confession comes in an affidavit accompanying a criminal complaint accusing Jeong of bribing two Army and Air Force Exchange Service officials — Holloway and Clifton W. Choy — so that SSRT could hold a $206 million contract to provide home Internet and phone services. Choy, who’d been with AAFES 36 years, died of heart failure in August in Hawaii at age 56, at a time when he faced possible federal prosecution in the case.

Federal agents arrested Jeong, 44, last week in Dallas and are holding him on bribery and conspiracy charges involving the AAFES contract.

The affidavit cites evidence gathered in a South Korean police investigation. That probe found that bribes were allegedly paid to Holloway on at least 20 occasions from May 2003 to April 2005, when he was AAFES general manager at Osan Air Base.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=59072