Seongnam Mayor Eun Soo-mi indicted on graft, corruption charges

All News 16:10 November 30, 2021

SUWON, South Korea, Nov. 30 (Yonhap) -- Prosecutors on Tuesday indicted the mayor of Seongnam, south of Seoul, on charges of providing special favors to a police officer in return for receiving insider information about a police investigation into her alleged violation of the Political Funds Act.

Seongnam Mayor Eun Soo-mi is accused of giving a 450 million won (US$379,000) streetlight replacement project to an unidentified company in October 2018 at the request of the police officer who was in charge of a police probe into her case.

At the time, police were looking into allegations Eun received transportation service for free from a local business in violation of the Political Funds Act from 2016 to 2017. She was elected Seongnam mayor in 2018 after losing in the 2016 parliamentary election.

The officer was found to have leaked information about the probe to Eun in exchange for the favors and received 75 million won from the company that won the public streetlight renovation project.

Eun also allegedly helped an acquaintance of the officer get a job with the city government.

The Seongnam mayor was also indicted on charges of receiving cash and wine worth about 4.67 million won in total from a close aide between October 2018 and December 2019.

In addition to the mayor, the Suwon District Prosecutors Office also indicted eight others, including the police officer and her aide.

Eun has denied all charges against her.