By Nate Raymond
Nov 3 (Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Courtroom Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Thursday rejected a bid by a businessman to dam his extradition to South Korea to face embezzlement expenses that stemmed from a 2014 ferry sinking that killed 304 folks.
Sotomayor rejected Yoo Hyuk-Kee’s request to stop his extradition from going ahead whereas he appeals lower-court rulings rejecting his effort to keep away from being despatched to South Korea to face trial on the seven embezzlement expenses towards him.
Sotomayor is the justice assigned to overview emergency appeals from a gaggle of states that embrace New York, the place Yoo’s extradition case had been pending. His lawyer, Shawn Naunton, had no quick remark.
Yoo, who’s also called Keith Yoo, had been a fugitive for six years earlier than his July 2020 arrest at his residence in Pound Ridge, New York, a New York Metropolis suburb, the place the U.S. everlasting resident lived along with his spouse and youngsters.
Yoo is a son of Yoo Byung-un, a businessman who based the Evangelical Baptist Church in South Korea and whose household managed I-One-I, an funding car owned by his two sons that ran the transport firm, Chonghaejin Marine.
Chonghaejin owned the Sewol ferry that capsized off the nation’s southwest coast in April 2014. Investigators stated the ferry was overloaded, structurally unsound and touring too rapidly.
Yoo Byung-un was discovered lifeless of unknown causes in an orchard two months following the accident after eluding authorities who have been trying to find him.
South Korean prosecutors have alleged that Yoo Hyuk-Kee had from 2008 to 2014 leveraged his household’s energy as enterprise and non secular leaders to defraud numerous firms managed by I-One-I out of 29 billion Korean received, or $23 million on the time of his arrest.
The prosecutors stated the household’s diversion of cash contributed to Cheonghaejin Marine’s monetary deterioration, which led to the neglect of ship administration and workers security coaching.
Yoo’s attorneys had argued that the U.S. State Division – not judges – ought to determine whether or not South Korea waited too lengthy to hunt Yoo’s extradition below its 1998 treaty with america.
The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals in August rejected that studying of the treaty. After the 2nd Circuit final month declined to rethink, Yoo’s attorneys requested the Supreme Courtroom to dam his extradition from going down whereas he mounted an extra enchantment.
“This hurt could be irreversible and catastrophic; i.e., any aid granted to Mr. Yoo by the Supreme Courtroom could be moot,” they wrote in a submitting on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Modifying by Will Dunham)
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