{"id":15456,"date":"2019-08-29T06:14:48","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T10:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=15456"},"modified":"2019-08-29T06:14:48","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T10:14:48","slug":"s-korea-ex-leader-park-and-samsung-heir-lee-face-bribery-retrials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2019\/08\/29\/s-korea-ex-leader-park-and-samsung-heir-lee-face-bribery-retrials\/","title":{"rendered":"S Korea ex-leader Park and Samsung heir Lee face bribery retrials"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Korea’s top court has set aside part of jailed former President Park Geun-hye’s conviction and ordered a retrial.<\/p>\n

The court said separate verdicts should have been reached on the bribery allegations against her and sent the case back to a lower court.<\/p>\n

Park was convicted in 2018 of bribery and abuse of power and given 25 years.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court also ordered a retrial for Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong on bribery charges in the same scandal.<\/p>\n

It said three horses worth $2.8m (\u00a32.3m) given by Samsung to then-president Park’s friend’s daughter should also have been considered as bribes.<\/p>\n

Lee was jailed for five years in 2017 but freed the following year after an appeals court suspended the sentence.<\/p>\n

What does the ruling mean for Park?<\/h2>\n

South Korean media said she could ultimately face an even longer jail sentence if she is convicted again in two separate verdicts, AFP reported.<\/p>\n

In April 2018 she was convicted of receiving or asking for more than $20m (\u00a316m) from conglomerates.<\/p>\n

Park, the daughter of former military ruler Park Chung-hee and the country’s first female president, boycotted court hearings, maintained her innocence and said the trials were politically motivated.<\/p>\n

Her trial brought to light the longstanding close ties between South Korea’s political elite and the\u00a0chaebols<\/i>, or family-run conglomerates, which dominate its economy.<\/p>\n

How does the ruling affect Samsung’s Lee?<\/h2>\n

The Supreme Court said the Seoul High Court’s interpretation of what constituted a bribe had been too narrow and the three horses should also have been taken into consideration.<\/p>\n

\"Lee<\/a>
Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong was freed from jail in 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They were donated for Park’s confidante Choi Soon-sil’s daughter to use in equestrian training. Samsung also paid Choi millions of dollars, allegedly for government favours.<\/p>\n

Choi was jailed for 20 years for corruption, influence-peddling and abuse of power.<\/p>\n

In 2018 the Seoul High Court cut Lee’s sentence by half and suspended it for four years.<\/p>\n

Supreme Court Chief Justice Kim Myeong-su said that decision “misunderstood the law on bribery… which is at fault for influencing the ruling”.<\/p>\n

Lee, the de facto head of the world’s biggest smartphone and memory chip maker, denies wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Samsung said that it “deeply regrets that this case has created concerns across the society”.<\/p>\n

“We will renew our commitment to carrying out the role of a responsible corporate citizen and will avoid a recurrence of past mistakes,” it said.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Korea’s top court has set aside part of jailed former President Park Geun-hye’s conviction and ordered a retrial. The court said separate verdicts should have been reached on the bribery allegations against her and […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,6],"tags":[800,6552,5047,409,4687,6553],"class_list":{"0":"post-15456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-world","10":"tag-bribery","11":"tag-lee-jae-yong","12":"tag-park-geun-hye","13":"tag-samsung","14":"tag-south-korea","15":"tag-south-korea-supreme-court","16":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15458,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15456\/revisions\/15458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}