Two top executives of Hyundai Motor Co. were arrested on suspicion of bribing government officials and lawmakers, the company's spokesman Oles Gadacz said on Friday.

Lee Jung-dae, Hyundai Motor's vice president and chief financial officer, and Kim Seung-nyun, chief of the company's procurement division, were arrested on embezzlement charges late Thursday night, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency quoted Chae Dong- wook, a senior prosecutor at the supreme Prosecutors' office, as saying.

"We arrested Kim and vice president Lee with a court-issued warrant after we obtained concrete evidence showing they were involved in the creation of Hyundai's slush fund," Chae said.

It is the first arrest of Hyundai's senior executives since the prosecutors raided the offices of the Hyundai Motor and its affiliates last month to seize evidence that Hyundai Motor Group had created slush funds worth millions of U.S. dollars to bribe government officials during the past several years.

The prosecutors will investigate how the slush funds were set up and where the funds went to, as well as whether the automaker's Chairman Chung Mong-koo was involved in the scandal, Yonhap said.

Source: Xinhua