Yoon Suk-yeol already faces ongoing trial on rebel prices over his transient imposition of martial regulation.
South Korean prosecutors have indicted former President Yoon Suk-yeol for abuse of authority with out arrest, the nation’s information company Yonhap stated.
This newest indictment on Thursday provides additional authorized jeopardy for Yoon who’s already dealing with an ongoing trial on rebel prices, introduced towards him over his transient imposition of martial regulation final December.
Armed troopers have been deployed to parliament below the decree, however the order lasted solely about six hours because it was swiftly voted down by opposition MPs, who scaled fences to enter the constructing. Parliamentarians later impeached Yoon over the martial regulation declaration.
Yoon, 64, was stripped of all energy and privileges in April by the Constitutional Court docket, which upheld the impeachment movement. He was quickly compelled to maneuver out of the presidential residence.
Prosecutors first indicted him in January – when he was nonetheless president – as “the ringleader of an rebel”, a cost not coated by presidential immunity.
“We’ve got since proceeded with the [insurrection] trial whereas conducting supplementary investigations into the abuse of energy allegation, resulting in this extra indictment,” prosecutors stated in a press release on Thursday.
The brand new cost additionally comes a day after investigators raided Yoon’s non-public residence in Seoul as a part of a probe into bribery allegations involving his spouse Kim Keon-hee and a shaman accused of receiving lavish presents on behalf of the previous first girl.
If convicted of the rebel cost, Yoon might be sentenced to life in jail or dying – though South Korea has had an unofficial moratorium on executions since 1997.
Yoon was the second South Korean president to be faraway from workplace, and the third to be impeached by parliament.
With Yoon out of workplace, South Korea is about to carry a snap election on June 3.