The Verdict - Chosun Ilbo
Shincheonji's Lee Manhee not guilty on the charges of obstructing the prevention measures... 3 years of prison with 4 years probation for embezzlement
Chosun Ilbo 2021.01.13
Reporter Kwon Sang-eun
The Court, "No matter whether or not infected, the request for a list of facilities and church members is not epidemiological investigation."
Last year, Lee Man-hee (90), chairman of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, was acquitted of all charges of violating the Act on Infectious Disease Prevention and Management.
The court said, "The demand for a list of facilities and believers on the part of the prevention authorities is not an epidemiological investigation, regardless of whether they were infected," putting the brakes on the excessive exercise of authority by the institutions that prioritized the prevention purposes.
On the 13th, the 11th division of the Suwon District Court (Judge Kim Mi-kyung) sentenced Lee to three years in prison with four years of probation.
Lee was charged with violating the law on the prevention of infectious diseases, obstruction of justice, and embezzlement of certain. The court judged that he was innocent of the charges of violating the Act on the Prevention of Infectious Diseases but he was found guilty on the charges of embezzlement.
The court said that Lee was not guilty of conspiring with Shincheonji executives to omit data from the list of believers and facilities required by the prevention authorities in February last year.
The prosecution indicted Shincheonji on charges of submitting an official document missing 750 facilities after receiving an official letter from the Central Epidemics Prevention and Countermeasures Headquarters, and failing to provide the resident registration number while submitting a list of about 210,000 believers.
In response, the court said, " The epidemiological investigation prescribed by the Act refers to interviews, sampling, etc. of infected patients' personal information, place of outbreak, cause and route of infection; the epidemiological investigation does not include the request for a list of facilities and believers," and, " The official document sent to the defendant is not a questionnaire or interview, so it cannot be considered an epidemiological investigation."
The court also said, "The request for submission of data is not an epidemiological investigation, but a preparatory stage, and data collection can be provided upon request, so there is no need to over-interpret the epidemiological investigation regulations" and added, " At that time, there was no punishment for refusing to provide information."
And about the allegation that Mr. Lee interfered with the execution of official duties by ordering to submit the document omitting facilities like the missionary centers, "It does not correspond to a request for information provision for epidemiological investigations, and the refusal to comply cannot be punished since it is on a voluntary basis."
He also said that it is difficult to say that he prevented the execution of official duties by omitting some of the facilities because the type or standards of the facilities to be submitted were not specifically presented in the official letter."
About the fact that Lee was accused of entering the site of the Shincheonji Museum in Gapyeong, which was closed by the governor of the Gyeonggi Province at the time, the court said, " The target of the restriction should be an infected patient or a contaminated place, but there is no evidence of that for the site of the museum, so the legality of the closure cannot be acknowledged."
However, the court found him guilty on the charges of embezzling 5.6 billion won, including 5 billion won in church funds, in the process of building the Peace Palace, a training center of Shincheonji.
He was also found guilty to one of the four charges of deceptively obtaining permission to use public facilities in order to hold a Shincheonji event.
The court said, "The sentence was set in consideration of the fact that the defendant has never received criminal punishment above probation and that the damage seems to have been recovered by reimbursing the damage or transferring the stake in the real estate."
Lee was arrested in August last year and handed over to trial before being released on bail in November. Lee, who also appeared in court in a wheelchair on the same day, left the court immediately after the trial. Lee's lawyer said, " We welcome the judgment of the court, which acquitted him of the charges about the infection prevention law, but we regret that he was found guilty on some parts," and added, "We will actively explain through appeals and try to be judged by fair law once again."
Original article: https://n.news.naver.com/article/023/0003589564
Disclaimer! I am neither a native Korean speaker nor a professional translator and all the English subtitles and translations are by no means official. They are just part of my personal research on SCJ that I want to share with you.
