November 27, 2000

Lila Libelieux, Editor
The Havelotte Inquirer
2397 Northern street
Havelotte, AV 60321

Dear Ms. Libelieux:

It was good to see you again at the Havelotte press conference. There you asked me to give you the conclusions ad-hoc committee would decide promptly. As you requested, I'm writing to provide you with our settlement of this scandal. And please don't print this letter on your paper.

We've focused on settling this scandal with these two major points; "How to deal with accusation against the mayor rumor" and "Should we continue with the commercial center." The opponents of the mayor insisted that he should be responsible for his illegal activities but the mayor protested that he had been innocent. It was not easy to confirm that he is guilty because he has developed our town in all aspects, especially in economy and he protested that he had used the pay-offs for the benefit of our town, not himself. Though receiving pay-offs is illegal by itself, if his arguments were right, there could be the allowance of his activities. In addition to that, he is a mayor and in a very special position. Therefore I felt that only the truth could decide the acceptance of this scandal.

Perhaps you would know better about the background of this scandal than me. But I'd like to give you some valuable background information which you might have not known, especially which was revealed in the meetings. First of all, he admitted having received the pay-offs from Lottebuild. He said that he had received two hundred fifty thousand dollars from Lottebuild. Responding to his statement, the managing director of Lottebuild admitted that it was right. When asked the use of money, he told us that he had spent it in various ways; expediency fund for holding the industry-display, expenditure for improving the condition of town-hall facilities and for the promotion of the commercial center and the like. There was an important question bringing up the family connections between them, that is, "Why have all the recent building contracts in Havelotte been awarded to lottebuild?". He answered that he had a strategy of improving regional industries, in other words, instead of awarding contracts to other region's companies he focused on enlarging the companies based in our town and there was only Lottebuild which had ability and capacity to build the commercial center and other buildings. But there were some problems caused by the pay-offs, for example, the managing director of Lottebuild said that he was suffering from the pay-offs and he wanted the reimbursement of this money because he didn't have even money for paying his workers. By result, it seemed to me that the system of management fees was intended to give a specific group a kind of privilege for beefing it up and has been successful in some ways but caused some problems and never undesirable in terms of the law.

As for the background of the construction of the commercial center, in the meetings it was found that the whole estimated cost was fifty million dollars and ten million dollars were used for the cost of plan, the foundation construction and wages of the workforce and the like. I hope that this information would satisfy your request for the background of this scandal. If you'd like to get more information from me, please ask me to do that.

Against that background negotiations have developed in order to take proper actions against this scandal. First, we had to decide whether he would be judged by the law or not. In order to decide that, we agreed to launch the police investigation and the scope of the investigation will be limited to only Lottebuild scandal this time and it will take two weeks to finish the investigation. I'll tell you something about the scope later in a more detail. Consequently, this scandal will be made public. As soon as the investigation finishes, the result of it will be delivered to the town council and they will decide whether he will be impeached or not. If they think he is innocent, he will be set free from this scandal and run for the elections but if they decide that he is guilty, he will be judged by the law and the scope of the police investigation will be enlarged into the previous, other cases related to him during his presidency and naturally he will not run for the elections. About the investigation, he agreed to show the police the bills and receipts of the pay-offs which he had used in order to reveal his cleanness then. Aside from this scandal, as I said before, we agreed to treat the matter of the commercial center separately.

As I said before, ten million dollars were used already for the construction of it and this is quite considerable money. One fifth of the money was already used so we thought that it was almost impossible to cancel the project or reduce the size of the center. But there were strong requests for the change of it's initial plan. As you know, initially the center was aimed at attracting foreigners so the use of it was focused on only commercial method. But many Havelotte citizens wanted to also use it for themselves. We thought it reasonable to accept their requests. So we agreed to use it for the citizens and there will be a library, recreation center and the like. About this matter, we've not decided specific details. Perhaps you may wonder how the commercial center will be run. As for this matter, we decided to give the owners of small shops around it privileges to rent a shop and then other people will have rights. They'll pay the rent and the center will be run by it. Finally, about the matter of payoffs from Lottebuild we decided to give the same money to Lottebuild but this is not reimbursement but urgent funds because the money (two hundred fifty dollars) will come from the leftover construction cost ( forty million dollars ) earlier than designed to give them. As I said before, the director of Lottebuild said that he had not even money for paying workers, so in order to settle this situation we will just give them the part of the whole construction cost in advance. That's all about the developments decided in the meetings.

My assessment of settling this scandal is like these; I think it desirable to launch the police investigation and for the council to judge it before the elections. If our mayor is really guilty, it doesn't matter whether we have the police investigation before or after elections. But if he is innocent, it's unfair for him to be affected by the bad reputation rising from the scandal and furthermore we may hesitate whether he should run for the elections or not. But the police investigation before elections will solve these problems. And as for the change of the use of commercial center, I believe that the action taken will not only reduce the dissatisfaction against the commercial center but also help the initial plan to be achieved: to attract foreign customers. Lastly, I feel that we have something important to be revised in the future. That is the administration system of our town. As you see, it's really never desirable for officials to get pay-offs from companies in any case. The mayor said that he made it a practice to get pay-offs from companies in order to do his duty. If that's right, we should take it serious to give officials expediency fund for doing their duties. Surely not all officials need that. If the money is properly used for our town such as the promotion of our town and we can know the use of money explicitly, that kind of system will prevent this kind of scandal from happening.

In conclusion, I hope that you will keep somewhat favorable attitudes towards this scandal before the investigation is finished. Looking back on the days after his inauguration, you also might think our town has got out of troubles and developed in many ways. Privately, I hope the result of this scandal will come out desirably and wish for your favorable attitude towards him in honor of his feats and position before the police investigation.

As always, I am grateful for your paper's efforts to reveal truths for the justice of our town and ready to help you if needed. And if you require further information about this scandal, please do not hesitate to contact me. You can contact me at my office or through e-mail or by other ways. My e-mail address is dongil74@thrunet.com and phone number is like this; Office: 704-8526, Mobile phone: 016-373-7408.

Sincerely,

No, Dong-Il
Town Clerk
Havelotte Town Hall