Lotte Group fell further into crisis Friday after the conglomerate’s second man in the management was found dead in apparent suicide, with him set to face prosecution interrogation on the same day.

Lee In-won, the retail giant’s vice chairman, the highest-ranking executive as a non-family member, appears to have committed suicide, the police said. His body was found at a walking trail in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province, at around 7 a.m. Lee left a note in his car, apologizing to his family for ending his life. He also wrote that chairman Shin Dong-bin is “a great man,” and that the group had no slush fund.

Amid snowballing rumors over his death, some industry officials and watchers suggested that Lee may have killed himself due to the pressure he faced during the prosecution’s investigation.

For more than 40 years, Lee worked for the group and the group’s owner family. He was not only a close aide to Lotte founder Shin Kyuk-ho but also close to the incumbent chairman Shin Dong-bin. During a bitter family feud over the control of the country's fifth-largest conglomerate, Lee allied himself to the founder’s youngest son, disobeying the elder Shin‘s order that control of the group should be passed to his eldest son Shin Dong-joo.

“Lee was in a position in which he couldn’t say anything and everything,” an industry insider told Munhwa Ilbo, a local news daily.

With the prosecution targeting chairman Shin Dong-bin, Lee may have believed that his death could put an end to the ongoing investigation.

Lee was the top executive in charge of overseeing the operations of Lotte’s 90 affiliates, and assisting the owner family for tightening its control over the group. He was widely seen as a man who knew every detail about the Lotte family’s alleged tax evasion, embezzlement and creation of slush funds.

Lee himself was suspected of transferring the group’s assets to Hotel Lotte, the de facto parent company of the retail giant’s Korea operation at a below market prices. The prosecution also believed that Lee was deeply involved in the years of illegal transfer of wealth from the founder to his children. He may have supported the founder and the incumbent chairman in pocketing 30 billion won every year from Lotte’s affiliates to create slush funds.

The prosecution has reportedly secured solid evidence to prove that Lotte founder had evaded 600 billion won in tax when transferring 6.2 percent of Lotte Holdings shares. He had managed the shares under borrowed names and transferred them to his eldest daughter Shin Young-ja and his third wife Seo Mi-kyung. But the law enforcement authorities have found difficulties in indicting the aging founder, who is said to have been suffering from dementia.

The target has shifted to the incumbent chairman, but investigators have been struggling to find evidence of wrongdoing.

The prosecution summoning Lee was seen as a signal that it is ready to bring chairman Shin Dong-bin in.

Lee might have thought his disappearance would be a way of protecting the chairman, said a source who declined to be identified.

The prosecution also expressed regrets over his death and said it would review the existing schedules of the ongoing investigation. Chairman Shin was widely expected to be summoned by investigators next week, as well as other members of the owner family. The prosecution has already quizzed Hwang Gak-kyu, another close aide to Shin, on Thursday.

Chairman Shin Dong-bin as well as the entire group were left in shock by his death, according to the insiders.

Shin was told of his death and lamented without saying a word, they added.

Born in 1947 in Kyungsan, North Gyeongsang Province, Lee joined Hotel Lotte in 1973 and moved to Lotte Shopping in 1987. He climbed the corporate ladder and was favored by the founder for supporting him in his quest to expand Lotte‘s retail business.

Lee had to watch the group’s reputation be tarnished by the prosecution’s investigation, which followed an ugly fraternal war last year.

“He was a good man with rational thinking and a spiritual leader for many Lotte workers,” a Lotte executive told Yonhap News Agency.

“He was a tenderhearted man and he seemed to have been under massive pressure before the prosecution‘s investigation,” he added.

By Cho Chung-un (christory@heraldcorp.com)