A particular counsel workforce has cited circumstances that Kim Keon Hee, spouse of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, might have been concerned in a collection of personnel requests for the presidential workplace below the earlier administration.
On Wednesday, particular counsel Min Joong-ki’s workforce disclosed proof {that a} shaman concerned in Kim’s bribery case had requested the appointment of eight people to posts on the presidential workplace by Kim, shortly after the 2022 presidential elections.
Two of them have been later confirmed to have labored on the presidential workplace, whereas one other was appointed as a consul common in September that yr.
Investigators suspect that Kim had acquired the listing of the eight people and will have exercised affect within the hiring course of.
In August, Min’s workforce indicted Kim with bodily detention on expenses of violating the Capital Market Act, the Political Funds Act and a regulation on the acceptance of bribes for mediation, making her the primary partner of a former president to face trial below custody.
Particularly, she was accused of conspiring with a former head of Deutsch Motors, a BMW supplier in Korea, in addition to an in depth affiliate, to govern the corporate’s inventory value and make 810 million gained ($582,000) in unlawful earnings between 2010 and 2012.
She was additionally accused of receiving free opinion polls value 270 million gained collectively together with her husband from a self-proclaimed energy dealer forward of the presidential election in 2022 in change for securing the nomination of former Folks Energy Occasion Rep. Kim Younger-sun for a parliamentary by-election later that yr.
Moreover, she was suspected of receiving luxurious items value 80 million gained from the Unification Church by a shaman in change for enterprise favors in 2022.
Earlier than she was indicted, Seohee Building officers submitted a Van Cleef & Arpels necklace and confessed to gifting the merchandise to Kim proper after Yoon was elected in March 2022, in search of a authorities job for the corporate chairman’s son-in-law.
The son-in-law, a former prosecutor, was appointed because the chief of employees for then Prime Minister Han Duck-soo three months later.
Regardless of rising proof, authorized specialists say it may very well be tough to carry her liable, contemplating that she didn’t maintain any public workplace and didn’t have any authority to make any personnel appointments.
Beneath the regulation, bribery expenses apply to individuals usually holding public workplace who present a profit in change for the bribe.
In October final yr, prosecutors dropped expenses towards Kim over her acceptance of a luxurious purse from a Korean American pastor in 2022, pointing to the nation’s anti-graft regulation, which doesn’t embrace provisions for punishing the spouses of public officers.
