Ex-S.Korean president Lee sentenced to 15 years in jail over corruption
SEOUL — Former South Korean president Lee Myungbak was sentenced on Friday to 15 years in jail for corruptions, including bribery and embezzlement.
Seoul Central District Court sentenced Lee, who served as the country’s head of state for five years from early 2008, to 15 years in prison, fining him 13 billion won ($11.5 million).
The sentencing session was broadcast live, but the 76-yearold refused to appear at the courtroom.
Prosecutors had demanded a 20-year prison sentence, with a fine of 15 billion won.
The ruling said Lee concealed his ownership of DAS, a lucrative auto parts maker, under borrowed names from relatives and embezzled about 24.6 billion won from the South Korean company.
Lee was convicted of collecting 5.9 billion won in bribes from Samsung Group, the country’s biggest family-controlled conglomerate.
The bribe was offered to pay lawyers’ fees for the auto parts company, which faced a legal case in the United States, in return for Lee’s presidential pardon to Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee.
The former president was found guilty of receiving millions of US dollars from former intelligence agency chief, a former lawmaker and a businessman.
Lee was sent to prison in March as he has long been dogged by allegations of corruption.
The court said Lee had embezzled tens of millions of US dollars from DAS, which he owns under the borrowed names, noting that the wrongdoing, disclosed in the course of finding the company’s effective owner, disappointed the entire society and people who supported Lee.
It noted that he denied all of the wrongdoing despite objective evidence and credible witnesses, while shifting the blame to others to implicate them in the corruption.
Lee became yet another former South Korean president to be convicted of corruption.
Former president Park Geun-hye, Lee’s successor, was sentenced in August to 25 years in jail in her second trial, an extension of the 24-year imprisonment handed down in her first trial in April.
Park became the first South Korean leader to be impeached by the National Assembly in December 2016. She was officially removed from office in March the following year by the constitutional court over a corruption scandal.
Meanwhile, Shin Dongbin, chairman of Lotte Group, the country’s fifthbiggest conglomerate, was released on Friday after an appeals court suspended his sentence.
Seoul High Court sentenced Shin to two-and-a-half years in jail with the suspension of execution for four years over his offer of kickbacks to the impeached Park.