South Korea prosecutors seek to put Samsung boss in jail for the second time،
Samsung Electronics boss Jay Y. Lee, who was jailed a few years ago for bribing a former president, now faces new sentencing.
South Korean prosecutors are seeking a five-year prison sentence for Jay Y. Lee on charges of accounting fraud and stock price manipulation involving an $8 billion merger of Samsung subsidiaries in 2015 (via Reuters).
The report goes into detail, stating that this case is the latest against Lee, who was pardoned for a separate prior conviction and last year solidified his leadership position at Samsung as executive chairman.
At the hearing, prosecutors told the Seoul Central District Court that Lee and other former executives violated the capital markets law to make possible the 2015 merger that helped Lee take a larger control over the group’s flagship product, Samsung Electronics.
Prosecutors allege the executives’ wrongdoing includes stock price manipulation that helped them achieve gains at the expense of minority investors. “The defendants undermined the foundations of the capital market to facilitate the succession of the manager,” the prosecution said.
Lee and the executives denied this, saying the merger and accounting processes that prosecutors took issue with were part of normal management activities.
Jay Y. Lee was previously convicted of bribing former South Korean President Park Geun-hye and was imprisoned for a total of 18 months between 2017 and 2021. He was paroled in 2021 and pardoned in 2022 .
