A Seoul court acquitted Samsung CEO Lee Jae-yong on Monday after three years and a hundred hearings. The three magistrates have dismissed the prosecutor's accusation of fraud and asset manipulation, for which he requested five years in prison and the equivalent of a 350,000 euro fine.
The events date back to 2015, when Lee promoted the merger of two group companies, according to the prosecutor, to irregularly inherit control of Samsung, after the heart attack that had left his father, Lee Kun-hee, incapacitated a year earlier. , son of the founder.
According to the prosecution, Lee would have inflated the value of the subsidiary Cheil, of which he was the largest shareholder, while driving down the price of Samsung C.
Five years ago, Lee was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in a case closely related to the one that has been rushed today. Specifically, for paying bribes to the president at the time, Park Geun-hye, in order to obtain her approval for the merger. The Lee family - together with his mother and two brothers - retains more than 20% of the shares of Samsung Electronics - the world leader in smartphones and chips.
Lee entered prison in 2019, like President Park herself, daughter of the dictator assassinated in 1979. The amount of bribes would have exceeded six million euros, channeled through the Korean "Rasputina", Choi Soon-sil, who also He accepted payment in competition horses. Choi's father, pastor of her Church of Eternal Life, was already known as the Korean Rasputin fifty years ago, when he became a mentor to the young Park, who had just lost her mother in another attack. political.
Although Lee was released from prison after six months, the Supreme Court ordered a new trial, for which he ended up serving another year behind bars, before being released on bail, like Park. At the end of 2022, the new right-wing president, Yoon Suk Yeol, pardoned him and brought together other leaders of "chaebol" - the large economic conglomerates - such as Lotte. The chaebol, which also includes Hyundai, LG and SK, fueled South Korea's meteoric industrial rise, but have often been accused of having forged spurious relationships with the military, politicians and judges to guarantee their dominant position and impunity. . Popular outrage was mobilized in the so-called candle revolution between 2016 and 2017, following new revelations about Park Geun-hye's miracle court. These led to his dismissal, prosecution and imprisonment. The same outcry that sent the most powerful woman in the country to jail also took away the richest man in Korea (Lee Jae-yong, according to Forbes).
Although Lee was banned from working for Samsung for five years, the 2022 pardon allowed him to regain his duties. His detractors believe that Samsung had never made as much money as it did during the time he was in prison. Others think that legal uncertainty has played against the country's competitiveness and the multinational's ambition. This, despite swimming in revenue over the last ten years, has not dared to make a single international purchase of caliber since the acquisition of Harman, back in 2017.
The other side of reality is that Samsung's profits have been declining for four consecutive quarters, reaching their lowest level in the last fourteen years. Today, Samsung Electronics shares have depreciated 1.2%, quite in line with the 0.92% loss of the Seoul Stock Exchange, while the shares of Samsung C
It should be added that in addition to Lee, thirteen other senior Samsung executives have been acquitted, especially from its Future Strategies Office, accused of the financial engineering that allowed the former to take control of the consortium, without large disbursements or tax burdens.
Lee, 55, has denied the charges throughout. The prosecution now has one week to file an appeal.
