Ex-Seongnam Mayor Eun Su-mi Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison on Bribery Charges in Appeal Trial

Former Seongnam Mayor Eun Su-mi was sentenced to two years in prison again in the appellate court for charges including granting an improper request from a police officer in exchange for receiving investigation materials related to her violation of the Political Funds Act, which is currently under police investigation.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

On the 4th, the Criminal Division 1 of the Suwon High Court (Presiding Judges Park Seon-jun, Jeong Hyun-sik, Bae Yoon-kyung) dismissed former Mayor Eun’s appeal on charges of bribery offering and acceptance, abuse of authority, obstruction of the exercise of rights, and violation of the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act, sentencing her to two years in prison as in the first trial. The court stated, "The sentencing judgment in the first trial does not exceed the reasonable range of discretion."

In the first trial last year, former Mayor Eun was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 10 million won. A confiscation order of 4.67 million won was also imposed. Park, Eun’s former policy advisor who was co-indicted on bribery charges, was sentenced to four months in prison, and Kim, Eun’s former personal secretary indicted for violating the Improper Solicitation and Graft Act, was sentenced to six months in prison with a two-year probation and a confiscation of 5.5 million won.

The first trial court said, "The defendant was informed of and approved the crimes committed in the process of providing benefits such as private contracts and personnel appointments in response to improper requests from the police officer in charge, in order for the policy advisor to receive investigative convenience related to a criminal case directly linked to maintaining the mayoral position." It added, "Despite being the mayor responsible for overseeing and directing city administration and affiliated public officials, she participated in the crime for personal gain, seriously undermining the fairness of public contracts."

The court further stated, "Nevertheless, the defendant did not reflect on her crimes and denied all charges for irrational reasons," and "She shifted responsibility by claiming that her subordinates committed the acts for personal gain, making severe punishment inevitable."

Earlier, former Mayor Eun was prosecuted for conspiring with her closest aide Park to grant improper requests to police officer Kim of the Seongnam Jungwon Police Station, who was investigating her case in October 2018, in exchange for receiving confidential investigation materials. She was also charged with granting personnel requests for another police officer who was Kim’s superior and receiving cash and wine worth about 4.67 million won from the policy advisor.

The first trial found most of former Mayor Eun’s charges guilty, including granting a request to assign a specific company to a tunnel streetlight replacement project worth about 450 million won in exchange for receiving investigation materials from Kim, and granting personnel requests to promote two acquaintances to administrative officers and assign them as team leaders.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.