SEOUL – A businessman whose family’s company operated a ferry that sank off South Korea in 2014, killing more than 300 people, will be flown to Seoul from the United States to face embezzlement charges, officials said on Thursday, after years of requests from South Korean prosecutors.

The businessman, Yoo Hyuk-kee, 50, also known as Keith Yoo, is expected to arrive in South Korea on Friday, where he faces trial on seven counts of embezzlement. Since 2020, he had been held without bond in New York state, where he lived for years.

South Korea’s Justice Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that Yoo would arrive at Incheon International Airport on Friday at 5.20am local time (4.20am Singapore time).

A company controlled by Yoo’s family, Chonghaejin Marine, operated the Sewol ferry. It capsized off the south-western coast of South Korea in April 2014.

Most of those who died were teenagers on a school trip, and the disaster traumatised the country.

The ferry was dangerously overloaded and top-heavy, and some crew members said after the sinking that they had never been trained for an emergency situation. South Korea’s coast guard was late to the scene and poorly prepared to help when it arrived.

Prosecutors said members of the Yoo family embezzled US$169 million (S$227 million) from a family-run church and from companies related to their business empire. The prosecutors say the thefts diverted funds that Chonghaejin Marine would have spent on safety measures, thereby contributing to the ferry disaster.

But the prosecutors have not alleged that the specific acts of embezzlement with which Yoo is charged contributed to the sinking.

Mr Shawn Naunton, the lawyer who represents Yoo in the US, said earlier this week that he was “deeply disappointed” by the US State Department’s decision to grant South Korea’s extradition request.

“This is an improper political prosecution that was launched in the days after the Sewol ferry sinking in an effort to distract the public’s attention from the failings of the government,” he said.

Chonghaejin Marine was once a sprawling conglomerate with ventures that included toys, ships and cosmetics. Yoo is accused of conspiring to defraud various family businesses of US$23 million through sham contracts.

In a civil trial, a Seoul court in January 2020 ordered him to pay US$46 million in damages to the government because he was an heir to his father, whom the court held responsible for failing to prevent the ferry’s sinking.

Between 2014 and 2019, the South Korean government asked the US government seven times for help in apprehending Yoo, according to documents on file with the federal court system. The State Department denied the first six requests but accepted the final one, forwarding it to federal prosecutors in October 2019.

In February 2020, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York received an arrest warrant and a certification that Yoo was extraditable under a treaty between the two countries, the files show.

The US Marshals Service found him at home in Westchester County, where he lived as a permanent resident with his wife and three children, and arrested him on July 23, 2020. He has been detained without bail since then.

Six of the counts he faces involve money he received from his family’s companies that South Korean prosecutors have called overpayment. The seventh has do to with money that he spent on an art project by his father, which prosecutors characterised as embezzlement.

Yoo’s lawyer says his client did significant work for the companies, and that the transaction involving his father’s art was legitimate.

Soon after his arrest, Yoo’s lawyers began working to dismiss the extradition request, first filing an unsuccessful motion in a district court, then trying again in federal court.

In November 2022, his lawyers asked the Supreme Court to block his extradition. Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied the request in the same month.

With the legal battle to stop his extradition exhausted, Yoo’s case went before the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, the division that handles extradition, Mr Naunton said, adding that he had made several arguments to the State Department.

Mr Naunton said he told the State Department that it was “impossible” for Yoo to get a fair trial because the South Korean government had labelled him a fugitive. In its announcement on Thursday, the Justice Ministry called him “the last overseas fugitive linked to the Sewol”.

“Keith was never a fugitive under US law, under international law, or under the terms of the US-South Korea extradition treaty,” Mr Naunton said. Yoo, who moved to the United States in 1989, cooperated with prosecutors in the Southern District of New York when they looked into his finances at South Korea’s request, his lawyer added.

His extradition concludes a major effort by the South Korean authorities to track down people connected to the Sewol sinking. Investigators were looking for his father, Mr Yoo Byung-eun, when he was found dead two months after the ferry disaster.

Yoo Hyuk-kee’s older brother, Yoo Dae-kyoon, spent two years in prison for embezzlement.

Various other Yoo family members and company executives have been convicted on embezzlement and other criminal charges. The Sewol captain is serving a life sentence for murder; he and other crew members abandoned ship without instructing passengers to evacuate.

The family business has mostly disappeared, with the Chonghaejin licence revoked and many assets liquidated to compensate families of the victims. However, South Korean prosecutors say they believe the family has hidden funds overseas, which they have sought to trace, so far without success. NYTIMES