South Korean prosecutors yesterday indicted Samsung Electronics Co vice chairman Jay Y. Lee on allegations including stock manipulation, potentially putting the de facto head of the world’s largest electronics corporation on trial for years.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office indicted 11 people, including Lee and former Samsung executives, prosecutors said in a statement.
The charges include contraventions of capital market and audit laws, as well as breach of duty.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The decision to indict Lee defies the recommendation of a civil panel and adds to the legal challenges for the nation’s most valuable company.
Such trials can take as long as 18 months and could stretch another two years if the case is ultimately decided by South Korea’s top court.
Lee, 52, has been embroiled for years in legal scandals that rocked the nation and led to the impeachment of former South Korean president Park Geun-hye.
Special prosecutors first indicted him in early 2017 on charges of bribery and corruption, alleging Samsung provided horses and other payments to a confidante of Park in exchange for government support in Lee’s succession.
Lee spent about a year in jail before going free in February 2018.
Then in August last year, the South Korean Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision to suspend the mogul’s sentence and ordered a retrial of the whole case.
The new indictment is related to that verdict, and centers on whether Lee and Samsung used illegal means to help him take control of the group founded by his grandfather.
The decision comes weeks after a panel of 13 citizens recommended that prosecutors stop their probe into Samsung’s succession and not indict Lee. The panel’s decision was not binding, but reflected at least some public support for the nation’s most important company.
Samsung’s attorneys blasted the decision as unfairly targeting Lee and his company.
“The decision not only goes against public opinion and legal fairness, but also damages the people’s trust in prosecutors,” Lee’s lawyers said in a statement. “It is hard to accept for defendants who believed in prosecutors’ fair decisionmaking process and protection of their rights.”
The prosecutors had been expected to indict Lee despite the recommendation. They have conducted a broad investigation, including hundreds of summons and dozens of office searches.
Separate from the original bribery investigation, but also related to succession, prosecutors have probed a controversial merger between two of Samsung Group’s units in 2015 and alleged accounting fraud that might have helped Lee’s efforts to gain control.
Once a new trial begins, Lee might need to attend twice a week until the court reaches a verdict.
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