"Suspicion of Gift Tax Evasion"... "Never Heard of Sublease Agreement"

[Anchor]

Supreme Court Justice nominee Kim Sung-soo has faced allegations of tax evasion after living in an expensive apartment in Seoul's Gangnam district for a deposit lower than the market rate. The arrangement involves a sublease contract in which his brother-in-law first leased the property and then subleased it to the nominee. However, reporting reveals that the landlord stated they had never agreed to this.

Reporter Kim Bo-mi has the details.

[Reporter]

This 120-square-meter apartment in Dogok-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, is where Supreme Court Justice nominee Kim Sung-soo lives on a lease.

He has resided there since 2021, and moved to an apartment of the same size on a different floor in the same building two years later.

According to actual transaction prices disclosed by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the lease price around that time was 1.5 to 1.6 billion won.

In official public servant asset disclosures, nominee Kim reported the lease deposits for both apartments as 350 million won each.

However, the actual lessee on the contract was not nominee Kim, but his brother-in-law.

This is a sublease contract where the brother-in-law subleased the property to nominee Kim.

Looking at the 2023 lease agreement, the landlord and the brother-in-law signed a lease contract with a deposit of 1.45 billion won. The brother-in-law, as the lessee, then set about half of that amount—750 million won—as the total deposit and rented it out to nominee Kim.

At that time, the deposit was 350 million won with a monthly rent of 800,000 won.

However, landlord A, who met with SBS, said, "It is true that I leased the property to the brother-in-law, Mr. Kim, but I had no idea at all about the existence of a sublease contract between Mr. Kim and nominee Kim."

Article 629 of the Civil Act stipulates that a lessee may not sublease the leased property without the consent of the lessor.

Without the landlord's consent, it amounts to an unauthorized sublease.

Meanwhile, nominee Kim previously lived on a lease in a 59-square-meter apartment in Yeoksam-dong, Seoul, from 2011 to 2020, and the landlord was his brother-in-law.

Although the market price for the lease on this apartment rose from 400 million won to 1.1 billion won over a decade, nominee Kim continuously reported the deposit as 350 million won in his public servant asset declarations.

An opposition lawmaker raised suspicions of gift tax evasion, pointing out that the deposit is significantly lower than the market rate.

[Representative Joo Jin-woo / People Power Party: He has resided in an expensive Gangnam apartment while maintaining a fixed lease deposit of 350 million won. This is a repeated and habitual tax evasion amounting to hundreds of millions of won.]

Nominee Kim's side responded that he moved into the Dogok-dong apartment together in 2021 at the recommendation of his mother-in-law, who was concerned about her unmarried son, and that "the nominee is also aware of the tax issues."

Regarding the landlord's claim of being unaware of the sublease, they argued that there is no problem because the brother-in-law's lease agreement stated that nominee Kim's family would reside together.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
(Video Reporting: Kim Hak-mo, Lee Seung-hwan, Shin Dong-hwan | Video Editing: Nam Il | Design: Kang Yoon-jung, Hwang Se-yeon)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.