The Supreme Court on Thursday confirmed a three-year-and-six-month prison term for Shin Jae-min, who was a vice culture minister under the Lee Myung-bak administration, for bribery.

Shin was convicted of receiving kickbacks worth about 117 million won ($103,700) from Lee Kuk-chul, the chairman of SLS Group, in exchange for peddling his influence so that the mid-sized group could avoid undergoing a debt workout program, between 2008 and 2009.

The top court also upheld the lower court’s order that Shin pay a fine of 54 million won and forfeit about 110 million won.

In June 2012, a district court delivered the guilty verdict for the 54-year-old who was one of former President Lee’s most trusted aides. The court decision was another blow to Lee whose image was tarnished by a series of corruption scandals involving his high-level aides at the end of his single five-year term. The appeals court handed down the same jail term last December.

Shin, a former newspaper journalist who worked for Lee during his presidential election campaign in 2007, was considered one of the influential figures under the Lee administration. (Yonhap News)