Kang Se-chan, founder and chief executive of Genencell, said he did not consider his requests to Justice Minister nominee Kim Seung-won to be improper lobbying over the approval of a clinical trial for a new drug.
Speaking in an interview with CBS Radio's "Park Sung-tae's News Show" on the 9th, Kang addressed allegations raised by independent lawmaker Han Dong-hoon, who released transcripts of recorded conversations. "I thought a request at this level had nothing to do with it," Kang said.
On an attempt to send 5 million won in political donations to Kim, Kang pointed to a broker surnamed Yang. "One day he told me he was close to lawmaker Kim Seung-won, and that is how the subject of political donations came up," Kang said. "I thought that much I could do." He added, "I never thought of it as a quid pro quo."
Kang also said, "When I was told the limit had been reached, I checked with lawmaker Kim Seung-won through Yang, and he said there was no need to do it, so I said 'all right' and left it at that."
Asked whether he had ever met Yang and Kim together, Kang said such a proposal had been made. "It was not a difficult request, and both the nominee and I are busy," he said. "We just put it off, saying we would have a meal sometime later."
Of the transcripts released by Han, Kang said, "Even to me, the contents are absurd," adding that they appeared to have been pieced together. "If you look at only part of it, it may seem to support what lawmaker Han claims, but if you look at the full context, or read it in writing, you cannot pick up the tone," he said. "The intent of the conversation can be distorted. If you look at the actual conversation or the whole content, what he claims is entirely different from the facts."
On suspicions that his sale of a stake to Sejong Medical before the clinical trial was approved amounted to an investment premised on lobbying, Kang said, "Investments are not made in an instant." He said the investment had been made after several months of review and a normal corporate valuation, and had already been completed before the Investigational New Drug approval was granted.
He also rejected Han's claim that animals died during Genencell's development of a COVID-19 treatment and that his side concealed the deaths in a report submitted to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. "When it is not clearly determined that a death was caused by a particular drug, it is actually standard practice not to record it," Kang said.
In 2024, Kang was sentenced to three years in prison, suspended for five years, on charges including obstruction of official duties by fraudulent means and violation of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act, for submitting falsified and incomplete data to the drug safety ministry to win clinical trial approval and using it to seek state funding. An appeal is under way.
