Seoul, Feb 7 (IANS) Harold Rogers, interim CEO of Coupang, returned early on Saturday after a 14-hour police questioning over allegations he committed perjury while testifying before the South Korean parliament in December.

Rogers is accused of lying under oath during a parliamentary hearing from Dec. 30-31 on Coupang’s massive data breach that has affected more than 33 million customers in South Korea, reports Yonhap news agency.

He told lawmakers that Coupang conducted its own probe into a Chinese national suspected of involvement in the data breach and confiscated his laptop at the instructions of the National Intelligence Service, South Korea’s spy agency.

Police were expected to interrogate Rogers about the allegations.

Appearing from the Seoul police investigative headquarters in Mapo at 3:25 a.m., Rogers left without answering questions from reporters.

Rogers has been questioned twice in a week as police hone in on the data breach case belatedly disclosed by the U.S.-listed e-commerce giant in November.

Police will likely bring him in for another round of interrogation over suspicions of a cover-up in connection with the death of a Coupang worker at a logistics center in 2020.

Rogers is expected to leave South Korea later this month to testify before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, as the committee is investigating what it has called South Korea’s “discriminatory targeting” of American companies.

Meanwhile, Coupang said on Thursday it has discovered a data leak of personal information from more than 165,000 customer accounts linked to an incident it first identified in November last year.

The leaked data includes names, phone numbers and addresses entered by customers on the address list for shipping, and the company has notified affected customers of the breach in line with recommendations from the state personal information protection watchdog, Coupang said.

–IANS

na/