SEOUL: The wife of South Korea’s most wanted man, a businessman linked to a ferry disaster in which hundreds of school children drowned, was arrested yesterday, prosecutors said, as the net tightens around the fugitive’s family.
Police and prosecutors arrested Kwon Yoon-ja, 72, on suspicion of embezzlement after chasing her for more than 20 days, an official said.
Prosecutors and police are seeking Yoo Byung-un, 73, who has eluded one of the country’s biggest manhunts for more than a month. The husband of Yoo’s younger sister, a former ambassador to the Czech Republic, was arrested on Friday on suspicion of helping Yoo escape arrest.
Yoo is wanted on charges of embezzlement, negligence and tax evasion stemming from a web of business holdings centred on I-One-I, an investment vehicle owned by his sons that ran the shipping company, Chonghaejin Marine. Chonghaejin owned the Sewol, which sank off the southwest coast on April 16 killing more than 300 people, many of them school children, on a routine journey from Incheon on the mainland to the southern holiday island of Jeju.
Authorities suspect Kwon, who owns one of Yoo’s subsidiary companies that sells health supplements, poured funds into companies owned by her husband and son. Reuters
