SKorean court upholds conviction for Roh’s brother
SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean court Wednesday upheld the conviction of the older brother of the late President Roh Moo-hyun for influence-peddling, but reduced the sentence he had received just days before the former leader’s suicide.
Roh Gun-pyeong was convicted and sentenced in May shortly before his brother — who also was under investigation in a separate bribery scandal — jumped to his death in a suicide that sparked an outpouring of sympathy for the family and accusations that prosecutors had hounded the former leader.
The Seoul High Court said in its ruling Wednesday that the lower court had given the elder Roh an overly stiff sentence because he was the leader’s relative, and also cited the suicide as a reason for reducing the brother’s sentence on humanitarian grounds from four years to 30 months.
Roh Moo-hyun, who served as South Korea’s president from 2003 to 2008, killed himself May 23 by jumping off a cliff near his home.
The elder Roh was convicted on May 14 of taking bribes in exchange for influencing the sale of an ailing securities firm to a state-supervised agricultural bank in 2006 while his brother was president. He appealed the case.
Prosecutors said he and two others accepted about 3 billion won ($2.5 million) for helping Sejong Capital sell its subsidiary Sejong Securities to the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, known as Nonghyup.
Nonghyup is South Korea’s largest farmers’ cooperative and offers banking services. The organization is independent, but is overseen by the government under South Korean law.
The Seoul High Court, in upholding the conviction, said he should “assume the heaviest responsibility as he was a key person” in the case, according to court spokesman Hwang Jin-ju.
The court, however, reduced his prison sentence from four years to 30 months, and reduced his fine from 570 million won ($480,000) to 300 million won ($250,000).
He has one week to appeal to the Supreme Court.
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