Lee Jae-myung faces legal woes post-election
LEE Jae-myung could face a slew of legal woes if he wins South Korea's presidential vote Tuesday, becoming the first person to take high office in the country while under active prosecution.
Most of his ongoing cases have been postponed by the courts until after the election and he has denied any wrongdoing, insisting the charges are politically motivated.
Although presidents enjoy sweeping immunity, experts warn he faces legal jeopardy down the line.
One of the most dramatic of Lee's cases involves a bribery charge in connection with a firm that is suspected of illicitly transferring US$8 million to North Korea.
While Lee was governor of Gyeonggi province in 2019, South Korean media reports say he allegedly arranged for a prominent business figure to make the payments in exchange for supporting the company's initiatives.
That included US$5 million his province was paying the nuclear-armed North for a "smart farm" project, and another US$3 million to fund a trip by Lee to the north which never happened.
Lee is also facing four corruption cases, most connected to allegedly dubious development deals while he was Seongnam mayor.
He's accused of approving a profit structure that unfairly benefited private developers, allegedly causing 489.5 billion won (US$356 million) in losses to the city.
He is also accused of leaking official secrets, allegedly allowing private developers to earn 788.6 billion won.
Two city officials linked to the project were later found dead in apparent suicides.
He also allegedly granted special treatment to a private developer in a separate case, resulting in at least 20 billion won in losses to the city's public developer, which had been excluded from the deal.
Lee faces additional charges of leaking internal information from another project in 2013, enabling private developers to earn 21.1 billion won in illicit profits.
From 2014 to 2016, he also allegedly accepted 13.35 billion won in corporate sponsorships for Seongnam FC in return for development favours such as land use changes.
The case that came closest to derailing his bid for top office was one concerning purportedly false statements he made on the presidential campaign trail in 2021.
The nation's top court said the statements "misled voters in assessing the candidate's suitability for public office" and ordered a retrial, after a lower court dismissed the charges.
That case has been postponed in light of the election.
Lee also denied a personal relationship with an official who killed himself while under investigation for a controversial development project.
Media reports claimed Lee and the official went on a business trip to New Zealand and Australia in 2015, during which they played golf.
The presidential frontrunner is also accused of urging a witness to lie in court to downplay a past conviction.
Lee was convicted and fined in 2002 in a TV journalist sting operation, but when he ran for Gyeonggi governor in 2018 he claimed he had been falsely accused.
Lee was eventually acquitted, with the court ruling that he had merely expressed a personal sense of injustice.
A separate case on this issue is still ongoing.
Lee has also been indicted on charges of misappropriating 106.53 million won of public funds while serving as Gyeonggi governor.
He is accused of covering meal and laundry expenses with a corporate card funded by the provincial budget, and misusing an official vehicle for personal purposes.
Prosecutors allege Lee gained at least 60.16 million won in personal benefits by using an official vehicle for non-duty reasons, such as rental, fuel, and car wash costs.
This month, an appeals court fined Lee's wife, Kim Hye-kyung, 1.5 million won for using provincial funds to cover a 104,000 won dinner in 2021 with spouses of current and former Democratic Party lawmakers, among others.
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