Hwacheon Daeyu’s major shareholder, Kim Man-bae (59), who had been sentenced to prison in the first trial on charges of requesting the passage of an ordinance to establish Seongnam Urban Development Corporation for the ‘Daejang-dong development’ in Seongnam City, Gyeonggi Province, has been acquitted in the appellate trial.
On the 8th, the Criminal Division 2-3 of the Suwon High Court (Judges Park Kwang-seo, Kim Min-ki, and Kim Jong-woo) overturned the original ruling in the appeals trial for Kim, who was indicted for bribery charges, stating, “There are errors in fact-finding and legal understanding in the parts that the original court recognized as guilty.” The court also acquitted Choi Yoon-gil, the former chairman of the Seongnam City Council, who was indicted together for receiving bribes in exchange for improper solicitation.
Kim was charged in 2012 for soliciting Choi Yoon-gil, the former chairman of the Seongnam City Council (66), to pass the ordinance for the establishment of the Seongnam Urban Development Corporation. Eight years later, in February 2021, he was also charged with hiring Choi as a vice-chairman at Hwacheon Daeyu, where he was a major shareholder, and promising to pay Choi an annual salary of about 80 million won and an incentive of 4 billion won.
In the first trial, which took place in February last year, Kim was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months, while former chairman Choi was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months, as the court acknowledged the solicitation as sufficiently proven.
However, the appellate court ruled that “the ordinance’s passage was due to some members of the Saenuri Party acting on their convictions rather than along party lines. Considering the confused situation at the meeting, it’s hard to deem Chairman Choi’s actions, such as conducting a re-vote after an electronic vote was rejected, as improper conduct. The withdrawal of some Saenuri Party members and the decisions made by the remaining members were done properly.”
Furthermore, they added that “there is no basis to see that Choi committed an unlawful act in his duties, and thus the bribery charges against Kim do not hold.”
Separately, Kim is also on trial at the Seoul Central District Court on charges related to causing damages of 489.5 billion won to the Seongnam Urban Development Corporation during the Daejang-dong development project, which took place while Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party leader, was serving as mayor of Seongnam.