The special counsel team investigating government interference in an initial probe into the 2023 death of a Marine has secured a critical mobile phone from an associate of former first lady Kim Keon-hee.

In a raid on July 10, special counsel Lee Myeong-hyeon’s team seized a mobile phone from Lee Jong-ho, a former head of the investment firm Blackpearl Invest.

Lee Jong-ho managed Kim’s account at the time that Deutsch Motors, a BMW dealer in South Korea, became embroiled in a stock manipulation case. 

KBS has learned that five days after the raid, Lee Jong-ho appeared at a riverside park in southern Seoul carrying a different phone, along with his associate, identified as Cha.

According to a source, the two deliberately destroyed the phone by dropping it on the ground and stomping on it, then threw it into a trash can about 200 meters away.

An official from the special counsel team witnessed the act and recovered the phone, which Lee Jong-ho used in 2022 and 2023 over a period overlapping the stock manipulation investigation and trial, as well as the Marine death case.

Lee Myeong-hyeon’s team considers the phone a key piece of evidence in special counsel Min Joong-ki’s investigation targeting the former first lady and plans to share the results of a forensic analysis with Min’s team.