A 90-year-old woman in South Korea has been sentenced to a year in jail for helping her son to launder profits from drug trafficking.
The woman, unnamed in local media reports, received a total of 386m won ($260,800; £192,800) over nine occasions between April 2020 and February 2022, which she transferred to a designated account at her son’s direction, an Incheon court heard.
Her son, known as Song in the reports, has been imprisoned in Cambodia since 2020, after he was convicted of trafficking methamphetamine into the country.
Given that Song’s mother visited Cambodia five times in 2019 and knew when her son was detained, she would be aware that she was dealing with illicit funds, the court heard on Monday.
“Her actions made it harder to trace illicit profits and contributed to the spread of narcotics, rendering the offence particularly serious,” judge Wi Eun-suk of an Incheon district court said on Monday.
The court took the woman’s age into account in deciding her sentence, as well as the fact that she did not have any prior drug-related convictions.
South Korean authorities are seeking to extract Song from Cambodia, according to local reports.
Song, who is in his 60s, allegedly implicated his daughter as well, Seoul-based Kyunghyang newspaper reported.
His daughter was brought to trial on charges of receiving more than 600m won of illicit funds and transferring 274m of it.
But she was later acquitted of money laundering as the court found there was insufficient evidence to conclude she had knowledge that the money was derived from drug trafficking.
By BBC News
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