Out of power and on trial: The corruption trials of former leaders in East Asia

In the last four decades, ten former national leaders in East Asia have been placed on trial for crimes committed while they were in office. The alleged crimes, some economic, some political, were also presented as abuses of office. The purpose of these trials was less to advance the rule of law than to serve the political interests of these former leaders’ opponents. They had three purposes: to seal the leaders’ removal from power, to cast doubt on the capacity of the democratic system to elect honest leaders, and to give retrospective justification to removals from power that breached normal procedures.