Cha Ga-won, head of the entertainment agency One Hundred Label, who is suspected of stealing hundreds of billions of won, is facing arrest.
According to legal sources on the 28th, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office sought an arrest warrant for Cha that day, applying several charges including fraud under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes. The move came after prosecutors accepted the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Financial Crimes Investigation Division's third request for a warrant on the 22nd.
Cha proposed to Knowmerce Co. to work together by leveraging the intellectual property (IP) of people affiliated with his agency, and in return received a 24.2 billion won advance on the condition of signing a contract. However, he is suspected of failing to properly carry out the promised project after receiving the money.
Police believe Cha executed a duplicate contract with Knowmerce while concealing that an existing contract with another company showed no sign of ending soon. Their view is that he lacked the preparation or ability to keep the promise from the start.
Earlier, police twice sought an arrest warrant for Cha last month, but prosecutors rejected both requests, saying further investigation was needed.
However, in the third attempt, prosecutors and police are understood to have conducted additional investigations through consultations, including tracing Cha's accounts and analyzing contractual relationships. During this process, the investigation team reportedly found indications that Cha opened the entertainment agency despite being heavily in debt from the outset and has since rolled over the debt by splitting multiple contracts into smaller pieces in an abnormal manner.