The election camp of main opposition party's presidential candidate Yoon Suk Yeol has refuted a media report that Yoon had covered up an investigation into an illegal lending case by a savings bank in 2011 while he was a senior prosecutor.

Senior spokesperson of the People Power Party(PPP) Lee Yang-soo said in a statement on Monday that the report by online news outlet Newstapa is clearly false. He stressed that Yoon has no association with Kim Man-bae, the biggest shareholder of the asset management firm at the center of the Seongnam development scandal, Hwacheon Daeyu.

Earlier on Sunday, Newstapa unveiled a transcript of a conversation between Kim and a friend in which he said he introduced Cho Woo-hyung, the broker who handled the illegal lending by Busan Savings Bank, to prosecutor-turned-lawyer Park Young-soo. He went on to claim that as a former subordinate of Park, Yoon covered up the investigation in 2011.

The PPP’s senior spokesperson refuted the claims, saying that Kim is peddling lies, and that Kim’s comments serve to protect the candidate for the ruling Democratic Party Lee Jae-myung.

Lee, for his part, requested that the latest media report be widely distributed via his Facebook page.