A district court on Wednesday sentenced the eldest son of the late shipping tycoon blamed for April’s ferry disaster to three years in prison for embezzlement.
Yoo Dae-kyun, 44, the son of Yoo Byung-eun, was convicted of misappropriating 7.39 billion won (US$7.28 million) from the ferry Sewol operator Cheonghaejin Marine Co. and six other affiliates between May 2002 and December 2013.
“The suspect embezzled tens of billions of won from affiliates by abusing his status as the son of Yoo Byung-eun,” said judge Lee Jae-wook of the Incheon District Court in his ruling.
Law enforcement authorities had sought Yoo Byung-eun — a religious figure and ex-convict — and Dae-kyun, believing that their alleged corruption may have contributed to the April 16 disaster that left more than 300 people, mostly high school students, dead or missing.
The younger Yoo was arrested at a hideout in a town just outside Seoul together with Park Soo-kyung, a 34-year-old female bodyguard, on Jul. 25, three days after the discovery of his father’s badly decomposed body.
Prosecutors had initially sought a four-year prison term against the younger Yoo.
In the same ruling on Wednesday, the court sentenced Yoo Byung-ill, the elder brother of Byung-eun, to one year in prison, with a two-year stay of execution, for embezzlement.
The elder Yoo was found guilty of embezzling a combined 13 million won from Chonghaejin Marine as consulting fees between June
2010 and April 2014.
The court also handed down a prison term of two years to Yoo Byung-ho, the younger brother of the deceased tycoon, for borrowing 3 billion won from one of the affiliates run by his elder brother’s family.
Byung-ho was also found guilty of making members of a religious group lead by his elder brother pay back 1.5 billion won on his behalf while the affiliate suffered losses of 1.5 billion won.
In a separate ruling, the court handed down prison terms ranging from 18 months to four years to 10 of Yoo’s close aides, including chiefs of the affiliates.
Among the defendants are Song Kook-bin, the chief of local door-to-door sales company Dapanda Co., and Park Seung-il, Yoo’s close aide and an auditor for I-One-I Holdings, the holding company of Cheonghaejin Marine.
The 6,825-ton ferry Sewol sank in waters off the southwestern island of Jindo on April 16 en route to the southern resort island of Jeju. Of the total number of people on board, only 174 were rescued while the others, mostly high school students on a school trip, perished. (Yonhap)
Sewol owner’s son gets 3-year prison term for embezzlement
