Fugitive arrested after seven years on the lam over record $477 million fine for smuggling caper

A man who spent seven years on the run dodging a 653.7 billion won ($477.5 million) fine, the largest sum ever left unpaid in a Korean criminal case, has been arrested.

The Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office said Tuesday that it detained him on Aug. 21 at a hideout in Yeongdeungpo District, western Seoul, and sent him to a prison workhouse, where convicts who do not pay their fines serve out the amount in labor.

The man was the transport chief for a criminal group that smuggled more than 40,000 kilograms (88,000 pounds) of gold bars from Hong Kong to Japan. A court sentenced him in 2019 to two years and six months in prison and fined him about 1.3 trillion won, the heaviest fine imposed in a single case at the time.

An appeals court cut the sentence to time served and reduced the fine to 662.3 billion won. He walked out without paying and disappeared.

Prosecutors found him by going back over case records and reconstructing the movements of people around him. Investigators established that he had met associates at a cafe in Jongno District, central Seoul, in July, and worked backward from there.

He had stayed ahead of them by rotating through several mobile phones, including unregistered handsets, and switching between Telegram accounts opened in foreigners' names.

After he was arrested, he argued that the five-year statute of limitations on the fine had expired. When that failed, he said he had nothing left and refused to pay.

The workhouse term is capped regardless of how much is owed. Set against the statutory maximum of about two years and eight months, his labor works out to roughly 660 million won a day, or 20 billion won a month.

BY KO SEUNG-PYO [[email protected]]