The Marine special counsel said on the 30th that it conducted a witness interview with Minister of National Defense Ahn Gyu-baek.
At a morning briefing that day, Special Counsel Jeong Min-young said, "At 6:30 a.m. today, we summoned Minister of National Defense Ahn Gyu-baek and conducted a witness interview," and added, "He finished the interview at around 9:30 a.m. and left."
Minister Ahn, who at the time of the 2023 Marine's line-of-duty death case was a member of the National Defense Committee of the National Assembly, spoke by phone for about 14 minutes on Aug. 2, 2023, with then 1st Marine Division Commander Lim Seong-geun, the day the Marine Corps Investigation Unit transferred the case file to the North Gyeongsang Provincial Police Agency.
Special Counsel Jeong said, "In relation to former division commander Lim's 'alleged lobbying to save him,' we investigated the content of the phone call between Minister Ahn and former division commander Lim," and added, "Because the call was quite long, we believed there would have been conversation related to former division commander Lim's case and conducted the inquiry to confirm that part."
The "alleged lobbying to save him" refers to suspicions that participants in the "Stylish Marines" group chat, including Lee Jong-ho, former head of Black Pearl Invest and a key figure in the Deutsch Motors stock-manipulation case, lobbied to help former division commander Lim.