A Seoul appeals courtroom on Monday upheld the acquittal of Samsung Electronics Govt Chairman Jay Y. Lee in accounting fraud and inventory manipulation in a case associated to a controversial 2015 merger of two Samsung associates, Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T.
The Seoul Excessive Court docket dismissed the prosecution’s attraction within the case involving Lee, who confronted 19 expenses associated to unfair buying and selling and inventory value manipulation beneath the Monetary Funding Providers and Capital Markets Act related to the controversial 2015 merger of the 2 associates. Prosecutors had alleged that the merger was meant to strengthen his management over South Korea’s largest electronics big. Additionally, they mentioned Samsung’s merger course of took a toll on the shareholders of Samsung C&T.
The ruling comes one yr after a South Korean decrease courtroom acquitted Lee of wrongdoing and almost 4 years and 5 months after Lee was indicted in Septemger 2020.
In September 2020, Lee, then the vice chair of Samsung Electronics, together with different former Samsung executives, had been indicted for advocating the merging of Cheil Industries, Samsung’s textile affiliate, with Samsung C&T, its development unit, to take over the tech big’s administration controls in 2015.
All the former Samsung execs had been additionally discovered not responsible of the accusations by a Seoul appeals courtroom on Monday.
Through the November 2023 listening to, Lee denied the allegations of misconduct and said that the merger course of adopted the corporate’s commonplace operational procedures. In November final yr, prosecutors in South Korea requested a five-year jail time period and a 500 million KRW wonderful, roughly $375,000, for Samsung Electronics chief Jay Y. Lee at an appeals courtroom.
The choice caps off almost a decade of authorized disputes for Lee, beginning with one in 2015 specializing in a merger that highlighted points with company governance.
“It’s troublesome to say the merger was carried out with out the 2 firms’ consent, because it was determined beneath association and cooperation of Samsung C&T, Cheil Industries and Samsung’s Future Technique Workplace,” the courtroom mentioned, refuting the prosecution’s declare that Samsung’s management tower workplace made the merger choice solely.
The prosecutors mentioned that they’ll evaluation the excessive courtroom’s choice earlier than deciding whether or not to attraction the ruling to the Supreme Court docket, in keeping with a media outlet by Yonhap.
