The top court has confirmed a seven-year prison term for a prominent former baseball official for embezzling a massive amount of funds from a school foundation that he managed, court officials said Tuesday.

You Young-koo, a former commissioner of the Korea Baseball Organization, was convicted of embezzling nearly 80 billion won ($70.4 million) from the Myongji Educational Foundation while working as board chairman of the foundation.

The foundation operates Myongji University in Seoul along with an elementary school, a middle school and a high school.

The 65-year-old You also incurred massive losses for the school foundation by selling off a piece of property belonging to the foundation so that he could use part of the money to prop up an ailing construction company that he owned, according to court records.

The Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s judgement that his provision of the school funds to replace the construction firm’s stock as collateral for its debts constituted embezzlement.

The misappropriation inflicted losses worth 170 billion won on the foundation, according to court documents, making it one of the country’s biggest-ever corruption scandals involving a school foundation.

You was also accused of intercepting part of the proceeds from the sale of Myongji University real estate and unlawfully using the money to pay off the foundation’s debts between 2004 and 2005.

You became the KBO commissioner in 2009 and has mostly kept a low profile while guiding professional baseball here to unprecedented popularity. He stepped down from the commissioner post right before he was indicted in May 2011. (Yonhap News)