South Korea\u2019s former first lady Kim Keon Hee, the wife of the impeached former president Yoon Suk Yeol, has been arrested on corruption charges, a special prosecutor leading a wide-reaching probe said.<\/p>\n
The arrest, which came after a Seoul central district court ruling, creates an unprecedented situation in which both members of a former presidential couple are simultaneously in custody.<\/p>\n
The court granted the warrant citing the risk of tampering with evidence, according to Yonhap news agency. \u201cThe arrest warrant against Kim has been issued,\u201d the prosecutors said in a brief statement.<\/p>\n
The charges against Kim include violations of capital market and financial investment laws, as well as political funds laws. She denies the charges.<\/p>\n
Yoon Suk Yeol was sent back<\/a> into detention in July as prosecutors investigate his failed attempt to impose martial law in December last year.<\/p>\n A special counsel was established after Lee Jae Myung was elected president<\/a> in June to investigate 16 criminal allegations<\/a> against Kim. However, Wednesday\u2019s arrest warrant covered only three charges.<\/p>\n Former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol arriving at Seoul central district court in July. Photograph: Yonhap\/EPA<\/p>\n Prosecutors allege she made<\/a> over 800 million won (\u00a3428,000) through manipulating the stock prices of Deutsch Motors, a local BMW dealership, between 2009 and 2012, by conspiring with others to artificially inflate shares.<\/p>\n She is also accused of receiving<\/a> over 270 million won worth of illegal political funding through free opinion polling services, and using this<\/a> to influence candidate selections for the conservative People Power party in the country\u2019s 2022 byelections.<\/p>\n The third charge involves accepting luxury gifts including Chanel handbags<\/a> and expensive jewellery<\/a> from the Unification Church through a shaman intermediary, in exchange for favourable treatment of development projects in Cambodia.<\/p>\n Kim was questioned for over seven hours<\/a> by investigators last week before the arrest warrant was sought.<\/p>\n On issuing the warrant, judge Jeong Jae-wook cited \u201cconcerns about evidence destruction\u201d as the primary reason for detention, according to Yonhap News<\/a>. Kim had spent four and a half hours in court, where she denied all charges against her.<\/p>\n During the hearing, Kim reportedly expressed frustration<\/a> about her personal affairs being scrutinised, telling the judge she was \u201cupset that even issues from before my marriage keep being brought up\u201d.<\/p>\n She will be held at Nambu detention centre in south-western Seoul, separate from her husband, who has been in custody at Seoul detention centre since July.<\/p>\n Once considered to wield enormous influence behind the scenes during her husband\u2019s presidency, the former arts exhibition company executive was embroiled in a series of issues throughout his term, including the infamous Dior bag scandal<\/a>, which prosecutors are now also reinvestigating.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, her master\u2019s<\/a> and doctoral<\/a> degrees were both revoked over thesis plagiarism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korea\u2019s former first lady Kim Keon Hee, the wife of the impeached former president Yoon Suk Yeol,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-65204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}