Chung Han-keun, who was implicated in the now-defunct Hanbo Group’s bribery and embezzlement scandal in the late 1990s, has been apprehended in Panama and was extradited to South Korea on Saturday after 21 years on the run.

Chung is the fourth son of the group’s former Chairman Chung Tae-soo, who was convicted of handing out massive bribes to lawmakers and officials to help Hanbo Group, then Korea’s second-largest steel conglomerate, fend off billions of dollars in debt.

The younger Chung was accused of embezzling 32-point-two billion won from a group subsidiary and stashing it in a Swiss bank account.

After the extradition, Chung reportedly told prosecutors that his father died last year in Ecuador, but the prosecution suspects he could be lying. 

Prosecutors had reportedly continued investigating the former Hanbo Group chief until recently, and said they are verifying the captured son's testimonies and looking into all possibilities regarding the elder Chung's whereabouts. 

The former chief was given a 15-year prison sentence for bribery and embezzlement in 1997, but his sentence was suspended after he was diagnosed with late-stage colorectal cancer. Chung fled the country in 2007 and his whereabouts remain unknown.

The Hanbo Group scandal, among Korea’s largest bribery scandals in history, led to nearly a dozen people standing trial, including then-President Kim Young-sam’s son and several presidential aides.

The conglomerate collapsed under five-point-six billion U.S. dollars in debt during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s.