A former senior member of the national police force was arrested Tuesday on suspicions of receiving hundreds of millions of won in bribes from one of the country's most famous swindlers.

The former police superintendent, identified only by his surname Kwon, was taken into custody after the Daegu District Court issued a warrant for his arrest, noting there were enough reasons to believe that Kwon may have committed the crime and that destruction of evidence was a possibility.

The 51-year-old is suspected of receiving some 900 million won (US$760,000) in kickbacks from Cho Hee-pal, the mastermind behind the country's biggest-ever pyramid scheme, while working at the Daegu Metropolitan Police Agency in October 2008. Cho fled to China a month later.

Kwon was fired in August 2012 on charges of bribery.

"After an extensive tracking of bank accounts, we found enough proof to back up the allegations against Kwon," prosecutors at the Daegu District Prosecutor's Office said. (Yonhap)