Samsung Electronic Chief Jay Y. Lee Declare Innocent In 2015 Merger Case

Finally, at the end, Samsung Electronics executive chairman Jay Y. Lee chit-chatted on the charge of stock price manipulation.

A couple of years back in 2015, a case was filed against the Korean Electronics Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee for accounting fraud related to the merger of Samsung affiliates, but now he is declared clean chip.

For violating the Capital Markets Act, in the November hearing, prosecutors called for Lee to be in jail for five years plus a fine of 500 million KRW ($375,000) since accounting fraud and stock manipulation connected to an $8 billion merger of Samsung affiliates back in 2015.

However, Lee disagreed with his wrongdoing and claimed that the merger and accounting process were part of general management activities for the brand in the hearing last November. In favor of himself, he also said that he had never had self-interest concerning the merger and had never tried harming other shareholders just by increasing his stake in an affiliate of Samsung.

Actually, three key takeaways came to be known, the South Korean prosecutors claim. In 2015, Lee, then vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, as well as the rest of the other executives at the firm, hiked up the stock price of Samsung’s textile affiliate, Cheil Industries. Apart from this, it also dropped the price of its construction subsidiary, Samsung C&T, while the merger, obviously unlawful to benefit Lee, offered greater control of Korean Electronics, the South Korean Prosecutors claimed.

As per the prosecutors, the merger process at Samsung took a toll on the shareholders of Samsung C&T. Not only this, but Lee is also charged with engaging in a $3.9 billion accounting fraud at Samsung Biologics, a biopharmaceutical unit of Samsung, as a part of the same case.

In a separate case related to the merger, the Samsung chief was sent down for bribing former South Korean President Park Geunhye. For 18 months, Lee went to jail, that is, from 2017 to 2021, was paroled in 2021, and was then granted a presidential pardon in 2022.

Thanks to “Tech Crunch“