Considering the mountain of lawyers that Lee Jae-yong is sure to have I hope the ROK prosecutors have some indisputable evidence if they have any hope of convicting him:
Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co., enters the Seoul Central District Court in southern Seoul on Feb. 16, 2017, to attend a hearing on the legitimacy of his arrest sought for the second time by special prosecutors for alleged bribery involving impeached President Park Geun-hye and related to the merger of two of Samsung’s affiliates. (Yonhap)
Lee Jae-yong, Samsung Group’s de facto leader, was formally arrested Friday on charges of bribery in connection with a high-profile corruption scandal surrounding President Park Geun-hye and her friend.
With the Seoul Central District Court issuing the arrest warrant, Lee, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co., became the first leader of the country’s largest business group to be detained in a criminal probe.
The investigation team, led by Independent Counsel Park Young-soo, requested the writ for a second time on Tuesday — less than a month after its first request on Lee’s charges of bribery, embezzlement and perjury was turned down.
In their second pursuit of the warrant, the prosecutors leveled more charges against the tycoon, including hiding criminal proceeds and violating the law on transferring assets abroad in the process of giving bribes to the president’s friend Choi Soon-sil.
“The rationale for and the necessity of (Lee’s) arrest is acknowledged considering the new charges and additional evidence collected,” the court said in a text message sent to reporters.
The court, however, rejected the request for a warrant to arrest Samsung Electronics President Park Sang-jin, saying it is difficult to recognize the need for his detention.
Following the court’s decision, Lee is to stay at a detention center in Uiwang, south of Seoul, where he had been waiting for the ruling.
Prosecutors have suspected that Lee gave or promised some 43 billion won (US$36.3 million) worth of bribes to Choi in exchange for the government’s backing of a merger of two Samsung affiliates in 2015. [Yonhap]
Police have cleared two civilians over a man’s death during a citizens’ arrest.
The civilians, surnamed Kim and Kwon, saw the man carrying out a sexual act near a villa in Suwon on Aug. 13, 2016.
They chased the man and caught him after he collided with a power pole.
They subdued him and handed him to the police, but he died en route to the police station.
The man’s family sued Kim and Kwon in October after the National Forensic Agency found that the death was related to physical impact during the arrest.
But on Saturday, Suwon Nambu police sent the case to the prosecutor, saying there was no evidence for an indictment.
“The police investigated the death and the manslaughter suit against the civilians,” a police official said.
“However, the prosecution concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge the civilians with manslaughter and ordered the case to be designated ‘clear from suspicion’.” [Korea Times]
The Stars & Stripes has an update on the brutal murder of an Okinawa woman by a Kadena Air Base contract worker who happened to be a former Marine stationed on the island. The killer’s lawyer has given the Stars & Stripes transcripts of interviews with him in an effort to show the guy is mentally incompetent. These records show how brutal the murder of this young woman was and why this guy should never be let out of jail:
Rina Shimabukuro is seen in an image from a Fuji Television broadcast. Kenneth Franklin Gadson, a former Marine working as a civilian at Kaden Air Base, Okinawa, has been charged with murder and rape resulting in death in the slaying of the 20-year-old local woman.
A former U.S. base worker charged with raping and killing an Okinawan woman fantasized about raping women for years and thought about shooting fellow Marines as a way of attempting suicide, his lawyer said.
Former Marine Kenneth Franklin Gadson made the revelations, including gruesome details of the crime, during a jailhouse interview with his lawyers. The transcripts were released to Stars and Stripes under the condition that they not be released in their entirety.
Gadson, who worked at a Kadena Air Base cable and internet company and went by his Japanese wife’s surname of Shinzato, has been charged with murder, rape resulting in death and the illegal disposal of a body in the death of Rina Shimabukuro, 20, who disappeared April 28.
Gadson was interrogated two months later when police said he confessed to the crime. He then took police to her body in a heavily wooded area.
The crime shocked Japan and led to a surge in anti-American sentiment on Okinawa, home to about 30,000 U.S. troops. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but I don’t believe for a minute that this guy had no intention of killing her. For example he claims he just happened to have a shovel in his car to bury the body because he keeps it there for gardening purposes. Who keeps a shovel in their car for gardening?
This is a lot of money and a lot of people who were scammed:
Police arrested a group of people with hearing disabilities for allegedly pulling off a fraud scheme and snatching some 28 billion won ($24 million) from about 500 deaf people in Changwon, South Gyeongsang, on Thursday.
The Changwon Jungbu Police Precinct found that eight people with hearing disabilities allegedly told their victims from 2010 to 2016 that if they invested in a real estate development project to build apartments and factories, they would receive three to five times the amount of their investment within three months.
They also allegedly told victims that if the project proved successful, they would be granted expensive cars and pensions in return. Many of the victims borrowed money to make the investments.
These eight suspects, arrested for fraud and organized crime, and their roughly 500 alleged victims all belong to the same private online association of deaf people. Authorities found that the suspects and victims communicated via a group account on a mobile and internet app for non-public communications called Naver Band. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Here is the latest development in the horrible rape and murder case on Okinawa by a former Marine turned base contract worker:
Rina Shimabukuro is seen in an image from a Fuji Television broadcast. Kenneth Franklin Gadson, a former Marine working as a civilian at Kaden Air Base, Okinawa, has been charged with murder and rape resulting in death in the slaying of the 20-year-old local woman.
A former U.S. base worker will admit to a charge of rape leading to the death of a Japanese woman last year, a new development in the case that rocked the tiny island prefecture and led to a surge in anti-American sentiment.
Kenneth Franklin Gadson, a former Marine who worked as a civilian at a Kadena Air Base cable and internet company, said through his attorneys that he killed Rina Shimabukuro, 20, while attempting to rape her, according to Naha District Court documents filed Friday.
“We do not dispute the charge of rape resulting in death,” the documents said, adding that Gadson admits to striking Shimabukuro on the head from behind while attempting to rape her. “As a result, the victim died … The defendant had no murderous intent, therefore we dispute the charge of murder.”
Gadson, who also goes by his Japanese wife’s surname of Shinzato, has maintained that he did not actually rape Shimabukuro. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read the rest at the link, but it appears Gadson has some serious mental issues as well. The bottom line is whatever his intentions and mental state was, he murdered this woman and should be spending a long time in a Japanese jail because of it.
I believe anyone that makes a false rape allegation should face the same punishment as someone convicted of rape. The woman in this case since the sentence was suspended only has to do 120 hours of community service after making an allegation that could of sent the accused to jail and ruined his life:
A woman has been found guilty of falsely accusing a man of raping her.
On Monday, Ulsan District Court sentenced the woman to eight months’ jail, suspended for two years, and 120 hours of community service.
According to the court, the woman falsely accused a man of raping her when she was drunk last year.
But the court found that the woman had consented to having sexual intercourse.
When her boyfriend found out that she cheated on him, she falsely told police the man had raped her.
“Sexual crimes often have no objective evidence other than the statement of the victims,” the court said in a ruling statement.
“Therefore a false claim can greatly hinder the justice system and needs to be severely punished.” [Korea Times]
If President Duterte has his way the policemen who kidnapped, ransomed and killed a South Korean man in the Philippines will be executed:
Filipino police officers and other law enforcement officials take their oath during a Senate investigation of a kidnapped South Korean businessman that was allegedly killed by policemen at the police headquarters in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines Jan 26, 2017. Pic: AP
On Thursday, President Rodrigo Duterte apologised to South Korea for Jee’s death, saying he wanted to hang the rogue police allegedly responsible and send their heads to Seoul, Reuters reported.
He called again for the death penalty to be reinstated so that he could hang 20 criminals a day.
Duterte also promised the toughest punishment for those behind the kidnapping and killing of the businessman inside the national police headquarters in October.
The death of the South Korean comes as the Philippine police face growing criticism from rights groups and some lawmakers, who say cover-ups and abuses of police power are rampant. [Asian Correspondent]
Between Hillary Clinton and now Chelsea Manning and General Cartwright it just shows that there is different strokes for different folks when it comes to mishandling classified information:
Chelsea Manning
President Barack Obama on Tuesday overruled his secretary of defense to commute the sentence of former Army soldier Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of stealing and disseminating 750,000 pages of documents and videos to WikiLeaks.
The decision — which a senior defense official told CNN was made over the objections of Secretary of Defense Ash Carter — immediately touched off a controversy in the closing days of the Obama administration. A former intelligence official described being “shocked” to learn of Obama’s decision, adding that the “entire intelligence community is deflated by this inexplicable use of executive power.” The official said the move was “deeply hypocritical given Obama’s denunciation of WikiLeaks’ role in the hacking of the (Democratic National Committee).” [CNN]
Here is a thought question? If Manning wasn’t transgender would she have gotten the commuting of her sentence? It doesn’t matter now and Manning is undoubtedly going to be hero of the anti-war left when she is released in May.
With General Cartwright’s pardon what I found most interesting was the details of how he was caught by the FBI as a leaker in the first place:
General James Cartwright
The Stuxnet campaign appears to have been successful, and its disclosure, originally in a front-page New York Times story and a book by Sanger, helped burnish Obama’s national security credentials leading up to his 2012 reelection campaign. But FBI agents, after obtaining his email traffic, soon identified Cartwright — who had by then retired but continued to serve on the Defense Policy Board — as a key suspect. When he was interviewed in November 2012, Cartwright initially denied that he ever discussed classified information with Klaidman and Sanger. Then, FBI agents showed him his email correspondence with Klaidman. At that point, Cartwright “took off his glasses, started rubbing his eyes and told interviewing agents, ‘You got me’,” according to a court filing by prosecutors last week.
The agents then showed Cartwright an email exchange he had with Sanger. After reading through the email, “Cartwright was shaking, losing color in his face and clearing his throat. Cartwright attempted to explain the email; however, his speech became slurred and he subsequently slumped over in his chair and lost consciousness,” according to the court filing.
Cartwright was immediately rushed to the hospital. After his release a few days later, he agreed to another interview with the FBI and confessed that he had indeed discussed classified information with the journalists. He formally pleaded guilty last September and was due to be sentenced next week. [Yahoo News]
It just amazes me that someone of General Cartwright’s stature is leaking highly classified information to a reporter via email. He has to know that intelligence agencies would be targeting such emails for collection purposes.
It appears South Korean prosecutors have been able to flip Choi Soon-sil’s niece and she is testifying against her. With Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong saying he felt pressured him to give money to Choi’s foundation and her own niece confirming the allegation, it seems the prosecutors have a very strong case against her now:
Chang Si-ho (front, L), Kim Chong (front, C) and Choi Soon-sil (front, R) stand trial at the Seoul Central District Court on Jan. 17, 2017. (Yonhap)
Choi Soon-sil, the woman at the center of a South Korean presidential impeachment scandal, clashed with a niece Tuesday over allegations they coerced Samsung Group into making donations to a sports foundation under their control.
Choi, her niece Chang Si-ho and former Vice Culture and Sports Minister Kim Chong were summoned to the Seoul Central District Court to testify on allegations they colluded to extort more than 1.6 billion won (US$1.35 million) in donations from the nation’s largest business group to the Korea Winter Sports Elite Center, which was established in June 2015.
Chang early on admitted that they forced the donations from Samsung and that she embezzled funds from the center. Her admission came a day after special prosecutors investigating the scandal sought an arrest warrant for Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong on charges of bribery.
According to the prosecutors, Lee was involved in Samsung’s decision to give up to 43 billion won to various organizations linked to Choi in return for the Park Geun-hye administration’s backing of a merger between two companies belonging to the conglomerate in 2015. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but what I haven’t seen strong evidence of yet is how President Park Geun-hye was involved in all of this?
This is a pretty bold sexual assault to drug multiple women in the back of a taxi and then sexually assault them. I am willing to bet this is probably not the first time this taxi cab driver has done this:
Two South Korean women said they were sexually attacked by a taxi driver while traveling to a night market in Taipei, according to local reports and the Korean foreign ministry on Sunday.
According to the reports, three Korean women hired a taxi around 6 p.m. on Thursday to visit the popular Shilin Night Market. The taxi driver, identified only by his surname Chan, was said to have given them a soft drink while heading to the market. Two of them, sitting at the back, passed out after drinking it while the one who was sitting in the passenger seat didn’t drink it.
Upon arriving at the market, the sober woman tried to wake them up, to no avail, and went to check out the market alone, thinking the two fell asleep due to tiredness. She went back to the taxi around an hour later to find out they were still sleeping. The three then returned to the hotel.
The next day, the two reported to the local police that they were sexually assaulted by the taxi driver.
On Saturday night, the police summoned Chan for investigation. They soon detained him as the suspect partially admitted to the assault in his testimony. He is reported to have said he only meant to touch them.
Meanwhile, a blood test revealed that the victims had sleeping-inducing drugs in their blood.
“The Taiwanese police detained the suspect for investigation and are likely to charge him,” an official from the foreign ministry told Yonhap News Agency, adding that the women have returned to Korea. [Yonhap]
