State prosecutors said Thursday they were seeking an arrest warrant for a key aide to the late South Korean shipping tycoon blamed for April’s deadly ferry disaster.
Kim Hye-kyung is suspected to have played a role in a string of irregularities believed to have contributed to the sinking of the ferry Sewol that left more than 300 people killed or missing, most of them high school students. The head of Korea Pharmaceuticals, an affiliate of the business empire built by the late tycoon was extradited from the U.S. on Tuesday.
The 52-year-old woman is known to be the “vault keeper” of the late tycoon, Yoo Byung-eun, who owned the Chonghaejin Marine Co., the shipping firm that operated the Sewol.
She is suspected of embezzling 2.1 billion won (US$1.9 million) from her company and a religious sect affiliated with the shipping company and evaded 500 million won in taxes, prosecutors said.
“Kim was deported to South Korea after being arrested in the United States,” a prosecution official said requesting that he not be named. “We sought an arrest warrant for her for fear that she may run away.”
The Incheon District Court will decide whether to issue the warrant during a hearing on Friday.
During the questioning by prosecutors, however, Kim denied most of the charges against her, according to other prosecution sources.
Prosecutors said that if the warrant is issued, they will try to prove the embezzlement and breach of duty charges against her and discover more assets of the late tycoon hidden under borrowed names.
Kim entered the U.S. in March on a 90-day visa waiver program and had since been holed up there, overstaying the time allowed for her as she was wanted by South Korean authorities in connection with the April 16 disaster.
She was arrested in Virginia in early September by officials of the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations on charges of violating the immigration law and was put on a Korean Air flight bound for South Korea on Monday. (Yonhap)
