South Korea: Appeals court increases sentence for ex-first lady to four years for corruption

Seoul, April 28 An appeals court on Tuesday increased the sentence for South Korea's former first lady Kim Keon Hee from 20 months to four years in prison on corruption charges.

The Seoul High Court handed down the sentence during a hearing that was televised live, after finding her partially guilty of involvement in a stock price manipulation scheme and guilty of accepting luxury gifts from the Unification Church, Yonhap News Agency reported.

It acquitted her, however, of receiving free opinion poll results from a self-proclaimed power broker, upholding the lower court's ruling.

Kim's lawyers vowed to appeal, while special counsel Min Joong-ki's team said it would review the ruling.

The special counsel team had sought a 15-year prison term for the wife of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol after indicting her on charges of violating the Capital Markets Act, the Political Funds Act and a law on the acceptance of bribes for mediation.

The team accused her of manipulating the stock price of Deutsch Motors, a BMW dealer in South Korea, to make 810 million won (USD 549,000) in illegal profits from 2010-12, receiving free opinion poll results from the power broker ahead of her husband's 2022 presidential election, and accepting two Chanel bags and a Graff diamond necklace from a former Unification Church official requesting favors.

In a reversal of the lower court's ruling, which convicted Kim only of accepting some of the luxury gifts, the appeals court said she was partially guilty of involvement in the stock manipulation scheme because she had provided a brokerage account holding 2 billion won to an investment advisory firm, through which she sold 180,000 shares in Deutsch Motors.

The appeals court also overturned the lower court ruling to convict her of accepting all the luxury gifts in exchange for her mediation, but upheld her acquittal regarding the opinion polls, saying the broker also provided the results to people other than Yoon and his wife.

In addition to the prison term, it fined Kim 50 million won, while ordering the confiscation of the necklace and a forfeit of around 20 million won.

"The general public demands integrity and morality from a president's spouse no less than that of the president," the court said. "But the defendant used that position to accept bribes for mediation and betrayed the people's expectations."

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