Former President of South Korea Indicted, to Face Trial

Former president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, has been indicted.

South Korean prosecutors will indict ousted President Park Geun Hye on Monday (April 17) on bribery and other charges, Yonhap news agency reported.

Lotte Group chairman Shin Dong-bin was also charged with bribery on Monday, but prosecutors did not detain him.

The former leader, already detained at a centre near Seoul, also faces charges of abusing her powers and leaking state secrets, Seoul prosecutors probing the scandal said in a statement.

Lotte denied allegations that it made improper deals with Park, or those linked to her, for favours, but said it would explain itself at court to resolve suspicions. Lee, who also goes by the name Jay Y. Lee, faces allegations he approved bribes of more than $38 million directed toward Choi's private slush fund.

She lost her presidential immunity and was dismissed from her post when the constitutional court upheld a decision by parliament in December to impeach her.

Park has been questioned nearly half-a-dozen times for these charges since her detainment.

Prosecutors said that what the company called "donations" were bribes used to win government support for the contentious 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates, which they say helped Lee cement control of the conglomerate. She became the first democratically elected South Korean president to be put on a criminal trial since the mid-1990s.

Still, the AP reports it's unclear whether that trial will kick off prior to the May 9 special election that will decide South Korea's next president.

If she is convicted, her bribery charge carries the biggest punishment, ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment. Some recall him as an abuser of human rights on an enormous scale while others credit him with spearheading a rapid economic rise in the 1960-70s.

Park Chung-hee's iron-fisted 18-year rule ended after he was gunned down by his spy chief in 1979, five years after his wife was killed during an assassination attempt that originally targeted her husband.

The scandal also shed light on her questionable, decades-long ties to Choi and Choi's father, a shady religious figure who wielded huge influence on Park from the 1970s until his death in 1994.