The Supreme Court has finalized a suspended prison sentence for Chang Young-ha, the chairman of the People Power Party’s Seongnam City Sujeong-gu district committee, who was referred to trial for raising allegations of President Lee Jae Myung’s involvement with organized crime during the 2022 presidential election when he was a leading candidate.
The Supreme Court’s 3rd Division (Presiding Justice Lee Sook-yeon) on the 12th finalized the lower court’s ruling, dismissing the appeal, which had sentenced Chairman Chang to one year in prison with a two-year probation period on charges of publicizing false information under the Public Official Election Act.
Lawyer Chang, ahead of the presidential election in October 2021, held a press conference and claimed that President Lee received approximately 2 billion Korean won from the international mafia group in exchange for business favors during his tenure as mayor of Seongnam. The Democratic Party of Korea filed a complaint against Lawyer Chang, but the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office decided not to prosecute, stating that Chang had raised suspicions believing Park’s statements to be true. The Democratic Party, disagreeing with the non-prosecution decision, filed a request for adjudication, and the court accepted it, referring Lawyer Chang to trial in May 2023.
The first trial acquitted Chang, stating, “It appears that Lawyer Chang believed the facts he publicized to be true,” and ruled that it was difficult to...
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