Seoul, South Korea (CNN) — South Korea’s many wanted man, who is believed to have ties to a association that operated a luckless Sewol ferry, has eluded detain for weeks, withdrawal authorities red-faced for not anticipating a high-profile billionaire.
The Sewol packet sank on Apr 16, murdering 288 people on board.
Through an investment car and subsidiary, Yoo Byung Eun, 73, and his dual sons are believed to have controlled a shipping company that operated a ferry, according to a semi-official Yonhap news agency. In late April, Yoo’s member sent a matter denying that he had any approach or surreptitious tie to Chonghaejin Marine Company.
Yoo is wanted for doubt in tie with an review into purported supports embezzlement, taxation semblance and other irregularities that prosecutors contend could have contributed to a sinking. A South Korean justice has expelled a aver for Yoo’s arrest. Investigators are looking into since a packet capsized, including factors such as imbalance of weight on a ship, overloaded and improperly cumulative cargo, and actions by a association and crew.
The Incheon District prosecutor’s bureau said on Tuesday: “The ones who are many directly obliged for a collision are officials with Cheonghaejin … Our prosecutor’s bureau is now questioning Yoo Byung Eun, who is station during a really tip of it.”
Yoo has defied summons to news to a prosecutor’s office, and left into hiding. The prosecutor’s bureau has come underneath open critique for watchful for Yoo to seem of his possess volition, that some contend gave him copiousness of time to flee.
Searching for Yoo
Yoo is famous as a “millionaire though a face” since of his hostility to seem in public. The locale of his 4 sons are also unknown.
Four members of a eremite organisation his father-in-law founded have been arrested, indicted of helping Yoo. South Korea’s Justice Department pronounced it requested a French counterparts to make a “provisional arrest” of his daughter. The younger Yoo has been incarcerated by French authorities in tie with a Sewol investigation, pronounced Magalie Josse, Paris justice spokeswoman.
French authorities will establish either to extradite a younger Yoo, according to a South Korea’s Ministry of Justice.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye lashed out opposite a Yoo family this week.
“The Yoo Byung Eun family, who is a elemental means of this tragedy, is derisive a law and causing open fury instead of entrance in front of a people to apologize and tell a truth,” she pronounced on Tuesday. “Such an act by Yoo’s family is a plea to a multitude and an act of crime that can't be protected.”
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This week, a prerogative for information for a constraint of Yoo was lifted to scarcely $500,000 and about $100,000 for his eldest son. South Korean media showed cinema of probable disguises for Yoo and his coming via a years.
Yoo’s eremite group
Yoo is a eremite figure of Gu Won Pa (which translates to “salvation group”), also famous as a Evangelical Baptist Church.
Some members of a organisation have protested in front of a prosecutor’s bureau in what they cruise eremite persecution. Last week, scarcely a hundred members of a eremite organisation stood outward a towering devalue as investigators arrived to hunt for Yoo. The supporters pronounced a church had zero to do with a allegations and likened a box to eremite persecution, according to Yonhap
Investigators have also started looking into a practices of a group.
“We are also in team-work with national military army closely questioning buildings and lands associated to Gu Won Pa,” pronounced an central from a prosecutor’s office. “We are also not statute out that he (Yoo) was smuggled out of a nation and hence, we are collecting comprehension strong on ports.”
Yoo’s history
Yoo has had brushes with a law. He was convicted on rascal charges in a 1990s and spent 4 years in prison, according to South Korean media reports. In 1987, he was underneath investigation after some-more than 30 people from a eremite organisation were found dead, firm and gagged in a bureau outward of Seoul. Officials investigated a occurrence as a mass murder-suicide, and also looked into either Yoo had any tie to a event, though dynamic he wasn’t involved.
Yoo is also famous to have an artistic change ego — Ahae — a photographer who has won general acclaim. His website appears to uncover Yoo holding pictures, though his face is not visible. According a website bio, Ahae was innate in 1941 in Japan, where his family was during Japanese colonial order of Korea.
On Apr 25, a extensive matter from his deputy was expelled promulgation condolences to a victims of a Sewol collision and condemning what it called an “undeserved conflict opposite AHAE, his impression and his certification as an artist.”
Meanwhile, off a southwestern seashore of Korea, hunt operations continue around a fallen packet as 16 people sojourn missing.
Journalist Francesca Humi contributed to this news from Paris.