An ex-lawmaker is found guilty by a South Korean court of embezzling money intended for victims of wartime sex slavery.

The Supreme Court of South Korea sentenced a former legislator who was convicted of embezzling money while heading an organization that assisted Korean survivors of Japanese wartime sexual enslavement to a suspended jail term on Thursday.

The decision, which upheld a previous court’s sentence of a year and six months in jail, suspended for three years, was not attended by Yoon Meehyang, who was also found guilty of falsely accepting government subsidies and illegally collecting donations.

Yoon called her conviction “unjust” in a Facebook message, claiming that she and her coworkers had managed the organization’s finances appropriately and “had not pursued private interests.”

According to Yoon’s organization, the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, the government subsidies associated with the fraud charges but criticized the court for failing to see the “substantive truth.

“I want to take this opportunity to reiterate that my colleagues and I are innocent, even though we couldn’t get a ‘not guilty’ ruling from the Supreme Court despite our efforts over the last four years,” Yoon wrote.

In 2020, Yoon and her nonprofit became embroiled in controversy after Lee Yong-soo, a victim of slavery, accused her of abusing contributions and other monies and not spending much on the victims.

Lee’s assertion was based on a misunderstanding, according to Yoon, who had just started her tenure as a legislator for the liberal opposition Democratic Party. Yoon refuted claims that she and the organization utilized the cash for personal benefit.

Tens of thousands of Asian women, many of them Korean, were sent, according to historians, to front-line military brothels to provide sexual services for Japanese soldiers. Hundreds were registered with the South Korean government as victims but only eight of them are still alive.