The special counsel team led by Min Joong-ki, which is investigating former first lady Kim Keon-hee, made the request on Oct. 26 at the final hearing in Kim's trial on charges including fraud under the Act on Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes. The hearing was held before the 24th criminal division of the Seoul Central District Court, presided over by Chief Judge Lee Young-sun. The team also sought five years in prison for Hwang, a former administrative officer at the presidential secretariat, and three years for Kim Tae-young, chief executive of 21gram, the company that handled the residence construction.
Kim and Hwang are accused of abusing their authority to award the residence relocation work to 21gram, which lacked a general construction license. The two allegedly asked executives at other construction firms to lend their business names to 21gram. They also allegedly instructed officials at the Ministry of the Interior and Safety to sign a construction contract with 21gram in violation of internal procedures.
The two men and 21gram's chief executive are also accused of defrauding the government of about 1.6 billion won by signing additional contracts under other companies' names to cover cost overruns during the construction. Kim and Hwang were additionally charged with drawing up and using falsified official documents indicating that construction supervision and completion inspections had been carried out when they had not.
Separately, a second comprehensive special counsel team led by Kwon Chang-young indicted Kim on charges including abuse of authority for allegedly having government budget funds illegally diverted to pay the residence construction costs, and sought a sentence of three years and six months in prison on Oct. 16.