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SEOUL: A South Korean court Monday imposed a suspended prison sentence on disgraced stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-Suk after convicting him of embezzling research funds.
The court, which passed a two-year sentence suspended for three years, said Hwang knew that data in his team's scientific papers had been manipulated.
It found him not guilty on a separate charge of defrauding private individuals who had contributed funds to his research.
The court was passing judgement after a trial lasting more than three years on Hwang, whose claims of a breakthrough shook the international scientific community until his research was found to have been faked.
Prosecutors had demanded a four-year jail term for Hwang, who went on trial in June 2006.
Hwang, 56, shot to fame in 2004 when he published a paper in the US journal "Science" claiming to have created the world's first stem cell line from a cloned human embryo.
In a follow-up paper in 2005 in the same journal, he maintained that his team had developed 11 patient-specific embryonic stem cell lines.
The claims raised hopes of new treatments for diseases such as cancer, diabetes and Parkinson's.
The government showered Hwang and his team from the prestigious Seoul National University (SNU) with money and honours. Hwang was awarded the title of "Supreme Scientist".
But his reputation was tarnished in November 2005 amid allegations that he had violated medical ethics by accepting human eggs from his own researchers.
Hwang apologised for the lapse but the scandal widened with reports from local television network MBC that his entire research was fabricated.
In January 2006 an SNU investigative team ruled in a report that his findings were faked and said he had produced no stem cells of any kind.
- AFP/yb
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