Former BIGBANG member Seungri has been sentenced to three years in prison by a South Korean military court on Thursday, August 12.

According to a Yonhap News Agency report, the military court convicted the former K-Pop idol of “multiple charges, including prostitution mediation and overseas gambling” and ordered his immediate detention.

Seungri, born Lee Seung-hyun, came to the center of the probe in a sex and drug scandal surrounding the Burning Sun, a prominent Seoul nightclub where Seungri was a public relations director, in 2019. 

He was indicted for procuring prostitutes for investors from Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, and other countries from December 2015 to January 2016 to acquire investment for his nightclub and other businesses.

Aside from that, the military court also charged Seungri for misappropriating about 528 million won from his club funds and habitually gambling in Las Vegas from December 2013 to August 2017, with combined gambling money of about 2.2 billion won at stake. The 31-year-old former singer has allegedly breached the foreign exchange transaction act in the process.

Seungri denied most of the charges during hearings, claiming that his business partner was responsible for the prostitution and did not visit the United States for gambling.

But military prosecutors demanded a five-year prison term, and a fine of 20 million won for Seungri in the previous hearing on July 2, saying that he has “shown no remorse and shifted blame to other people despite enjoying large benefits from his crimes.”

Seungri debuted as a member of K-Pop bo group BIGBANG in 2006. However, in March 2019, following the exposure of the Burning Sun Scandal, he announced his retirement from the entertainment industry. – WhatALife.ph

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