A Seoul court Tuesday handed a two-year jail term to Lee Sang-deuk, President Lee Myung-bak’s elder brother, for receiving illegal political funds from two savings bank and Kolon Group. Lee, a former six-term lawmaker, was also ordered to pay 750 million won in fines ― the same amount he was found guilty of taking in kickbacks.
The court also sentenced Rep. Chung Doo-un of the ruling Saenuri Party to one year in prison for colluding with the elder Lee to take 300 million won from the two banks. Chung, formerly a close aide to President Lee, who went on trial without being detained, was immediately arrested after the ruling.
This is the first time that a brother of a sitting president has been convicted of criminal charges. The scandal involving the elder Lee is the latest in a series of corruption cases involving the president’s relatives and confidants as he faces his final days at Cheong Wa Dae.
The verdict must be an embarrassment to the chief executive who has already had to apologize several times for corruption scandals. It’s a shame that presidential apologies have become a rite of passage every five years because of scandals implicating those in power.
The lion’s share of the blame must be put on President Lee who failed to deal with his relatives properly. In hindsight, he should have persuaded his elder brother to retire from politics upon taking office. But he didn’t and has humiliated himself.
On Friday, the elder Lee lodged an appeal against his prison sentence, brushing aside speculation that he may not appeal to make himself eligible for a presidential amnesty, which could take place around Lunar New Year’s Day next month, and this must be a right decision.
What is needed most is to hammer out durable measures to terminate the shameful tradition of high-profile bribery scandals that always shake the country toward the end of a president’s term. President-elect Park Geun-hye must regard this latest scandal as a lesson from which she can learn and should not make the same mistake herself.
Park has promised to create an independent body that would conduct special investigations into the president’s relatives. Yet this might not be sufficient, given that the incumbent president also bragged about a corruption-free administration five years ago.