A court in South Korea sentenced a 90-year-old grandmother to a year in prison for aiding her jailed son in laundering profits from drug trafficking.
The Incheon District Court on Monday sentenced the woman, who has not been publicly identified, to one year in prison and ordered the forfeiture of 386m won (£192,800) that she knowingly received and transferred.
The woman was accused of concealing illegal revenue by receiving cash in Korea from unidentified individuals and remitting it to designated accounts at the direction of her son.
Her son, now in his 60s and identified as Song, has been serving a prison sentence in Cambodia since 2020 on charges that included trafficking methamphetamine into the Southeast Asian country.
Prosecutors argued that the woman received the money on nine occasions between April 2019 and February 2022 and transferred the amount to a designated account at her son's direction.
Song reportedly used a mobile phone from the prison in Cambodia to communicate with accomplices and smuggled narcotics into South Korea.
The woman argued that she did not know the money received was linked to narcotics crime, Chosun Biz reported.
The court was told that the woman would be aware that she was dealing with illicit funds, given that she visited Cambodia five times in 2019 and knew when her son was detained.
“The defendant accepted illegal proceeds while being aware of circumstances indicating their connection to drug-related offences,” the judge said, adding: "Drug crimes have a serious detrimental impact on society as a whole, necessitating strict punishment."
The judge said that the woman's "actions made it harder to trace illicit profits and contributed to the spread of narcotics, rendering the offence particularly serious".
However, the court took the woman’s age, as well as the absence of any prior drug-related convictions, into account while awarding her sentence.
Song also allegedly implicated his daughter, who was brought to trial on charges of receiving over 600m won (£300,573) of illicit funds and transferring 274m (£137,262 ) of it.
The daughter was acquitted after the court found the evidence against her insufficient to establish involvement.
Prosecutors are reportedly seeking Song’s extradition to South Korea.
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