Donald Trump first ex-US president to be indicted. When former world leaders were jailed or charged

Former US president Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury, a historic reckoning after years of investigations into his personal, political and business dealings and an abrupt jolt to his bid to retake the White House. The 76-year-old is being charged over hush money payments made on his behalf to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. Donald Trump has denied any wrongdoing and accuses prosecutors of engaging in a politically motivated “witch hunt" to damage his campaign. While Trump becomes the first former American president to be criminally indicted, other democracies have shown little reluctance in the past 20 years to drag their leaders into court. Below are the former world leaders who have either been arrested or charged. Also read: Trump indicted over hush money: Rival Ron DeSantis says Florida ‘won’t assist’ in former president’s ’extradition’ South Korea According to the New York Times, former President Roh Moo-hyun died by suicide in May 2009 while being investigated for corruption. He admitted that a businessman contributed $6 million (Rs 50 crore) to his relatives between 2003 and 2008 while they were in office, but he insisted the payments weren’t bribes. This isn’t the only time that a South Korean president has faced prison term. Former President Lee Myung-bak, who was in office from 2008 to 2013, was charged with embezzling more than 30 billion won and collecting bribes from a variety of institutions, including Samsung in 2020. [caption id=“attachment_12384092” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Former South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak appears for his trial at the Seoul Central District Court. The former president was accused of embezzlement and corruption. File image/Reuters[/caption] Lee was sentenced to 17 years in prison and the South Korean courts imposed a 13 billion won fine on him. In December 2022, he received a presidential pardon not only cancelling the remaining 15 years of his sentence, but also voding the unpaid 8.2 billion won of the 13 billion won fine. Former President Park Geun-hye was also convicted of abuse of power and coercion in 2018 after being impeached a year earlier. Three years later, she too received special amnesty and was pardoned from “a perspective of national unity”. Israel In 2014, Ehud Olmert, who was prime minister from 2006 to 2009, was convicted of accepting bribes to promote real estate projects in Jerusalem during his previous terms as mayor and trade minister, and obstructing justice. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison, but was released in 16 months, reported the Associated Press. Besides him, Moshe Katsav, who was president from the year 2000 to 2007, was also convicted in December 2010 for raping an aide while he was a Cabinet minister in the 1990s and also sexually harassing two other women when he was the head of state. In 2016, Katsav, who has always maintained his innocence, was released from Ma’asiyahu Prison in Ramla. The case had stirred deep emotions in Israel and even sparked off a national debate on sexual harassment. [caption id=“attachment_12383712” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Even though he is the country’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a corruption trial. AP[/caption] Even though he is the country’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a corruption trial. He is accused of betraying trust and receiving bribes, but he insists that he did nothing wrong. According to the New York Times, he is accused of providing governmental favours to powerful business people in exchange for presents. His plan to reform the legal system has triggered enormous demonstrations as the trial is still going on. France Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president from 2007 to 2012 was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to a year of house arrest for illegal campaign financing. He was accused of having spent almost twice the maximum legal amount of €22.5million on the re-election bid that he lost to Socialist Francois Hollande. The court stated that Sarkozy “knew” the legal limit was at stake and “voluntarily” failed to supervise additional expenses. Sarkozy denied any “fraudulent intent”. He also said he did not handle the day-to-day organisation because he had a team to do that and therefore could not be blamed for the amount of spending. Before Sarkozy, in 2011, Jacques Chirac, who served as president from 1995 to 2007, was found guilty of misusing public funds, betraying trust, and engaging in an unlawful conflict of interest while serving as mayor of Paris, reported Yahoo News. He received a two-year sentence with probation. Brazil Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was imprisoned in April 2018 after a sentence for corruption and money laundering handed down by the controversial judge Sergio Moro was upheld by an appeal court. He has always proclaimed his innocence and argued the case against him was “politically motivated,” according to The Guardian. According to AP, the now president also faced other charges such as influence peddling and obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to 12 years of prison. Lula and an additional 5,000 prisoners were released, though, after Brazil’s supreme court subsequently decided that defendants could only be imprisoned after all appeals to higher courts had been exhausted, reported The Guardian. [caption id=“attachment_12383732” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was imprisoned in April 2018 after a sentence for corruption and money laundering. AP[/caption] Pakistan Imran Khan , who served as prime minister from 2018 to 2022, was ousted following a vote of no-confidence. He was charged in August last year with violating an anti-terrorism law and was also accused of threatening to harm government officials. The former prime minister has been facing dozens of cases registered against him in various cities after his ouster from power. [caption id=“attachment_12383772” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Imran Khan has been facing dozens of cases registered against him in various cities after his ouster from power. AP[/caption] Taiwan According to BBC, Chen Shui-bian, who served as president from 2000 to 2008, received a 20-year prison term for corruption-related offences. He was found guilty in 2009 of forgery, money laundering, and theft of public funds. He was freed from prison on medical parole after serving six years of his sentence Malaysia Former Prime Minister Najib Razak (from 2009 to 2018) is currently serving 12 years in prison after the Federal Court maintained his 2020 conviction for misappropriating 27 million ringgit in funds from former 1MDB unit SRC International to his personal bank account, according to News18. The 1MDB scandal outraged Malaysians with its billions of dollars of losses. Italy According to Yahoo News, a prosecution involving the sexually explicit “bunga bunga” parties that proto-Trump figure Silvio Berlusconi hosted while in office resulted in his acquittal of witness tampering in February. He served as prime minister intermittently for nine years, from 1994 to 2011, until his resignation. The trial was the third in a scandal that also involved allegations that he paid for sex with a minor in 2010 while he was still the premier. He was acquitted. Yet, according to the report, Berlusconi was found guilty in 2013 of tax fraud at his Mediaset television company, and the Senate kicked him out of the House of Representatives. [caption id=“attachment_12383812” align=“alignnone” width=“666”] Berlusconi was found guilty in 2013 of tax fraud at his Mediaset television company. AP[/caption] In 2014, a four-year prison term for tax fraud was reduced to community service helping elderly people with dementia. That same year, a different sentence for paying for sex with a minor prostitute was overturned, according to Slate.com. Iceland Former Icelandic prime minister Geir Haarde was convicted of negligence for his part in the nation’s 2008 financial collapse, but he was found innocent of more serious charges that could have resulted in prison time, according to Slate.com. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. 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