(Seoul) South Korean justice reduced Friday by 10 years the cumulative prison sentence of 32 years inflicted on ex-president Park Geun-hye after the corruption scandal which had caused his dismissal in 2017.
Posted on 10 July 2020 at 8 o'clock18
France Media Agency
The first woman to take the head of South Korea had been sentenced to cumulative sentences of 30 years in prison for corruption and abuse of power in particular.
But the Seoul High Court, ruling on appeal on Friday, sentenced her to 15 years in prison for corruption and at 5 years cumulative for the other counts.
M me Park “has not fulfilled his constitutional obligations as president”, but has not makes use of funds illegally obtained for his personal interest, the judges said.
She was also ordered to pay a total of 21, 5 billion won (approximately 24, 3 million Canadian dollars) fine.
M me Park was not present at the time of the judgment. She refused to go to the hearings, finding the prosecutions biased.
She had also been sentenced to two years in prison for violations of the electoral law, which brought the total of the initial sentence to 32 years.
This total is now 22 years, and she will be in her 80s at the end of this sentence.
First woman elected president in South Korea, M me Park had been removed in 2017 at the end of monster demonstrations provoked by revelations according to which she and her confidante touched bribes extracted from the largest conglomerates of the country in exchange for favors.
In 2018, she was sentenced to 32 years of detention for corruption, abuse of power, violation of electoral law and for embezzling funds from the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
This corruption scandal had brought to light the troubled connections between family conglomerates in South Korea like Samsung, and political power, through M me Park and his shadow adviser Choi Soon-sil, who had accepted bribes in exchange for political favors.