SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Samsung’s son Lee Jae-yong and prosecutors have decided not to appeal a court ruling condemning him for bribing the former South Korean president for business favors, confirming the two-and-a-half years in prison for the country’s most influential corporate leader, according to lawyers and court officials Monday.
But Lee’s legal problems are not over. He has been charged separately with charges of stock price manipulation, breach of trust and audit breaches related to a 2015 merger between two Samsung subsidiaries. The deal helped strengthen Lee’s control over Samsung’s corporate empire.
The bribery allegation involving Lee was a key crime in the 2016 corruption scandal that ousted Park Geun-hye from the presidency and sent her to jail.
In a long-awaited trial of Lee last week, the Seoul High Court found him guilty of bribing Park and one of his close confidants to win government support for the controversial merger between Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, which helped strengthen Lee’s control over Samsung’s business. empires.
The deal faced opposition from some shareholders who argued that it unfairly benefited the Lee family and was only successful with the support of a state-controlled national pension fund, one of the largest investors in Samsung.
Lee had portrayed himself as a victim of abuse of presidential power and his lawyers criticized the sentence. But after reflecting on his options, Lee decided to “humbly accept” the Supreme Court’s decision, said his lead attorney, Injae Lee.
Prosecutors had asked for a 9-year prison sentence for Lee Jae-yong. In a statement released to national media, they said the court was too lenient with Lee considering the seriousness of his crimes, but they will not appeal because their main purpose was to prove that the payments between Lee and Park were bribes.
Samsung did not release a statement on Lee’s legal issues.
Lee, 52, leads the Samsung group as vice president of Samsung Electronics, one of the world’s largest chip and smartphone makers.
Like other family-run conglomerates in South Korea, Samsung has been credited with helping boost the country’s economy as one of the largest in the world, amid the devastation of the 1950-53 Korean War. . But its opaque property structures and often corrupt links with bureaucrats and government officials have been seen as a cradle of corruption in South Korea.
Although he has never admitted to criminal offenses, Lee has expressed regret for causing “public concern” over the corruption scandal and has worked to improve Samsung’s public image. He stated that the inheritance transfers to Samsung would end, promising that the management rights he inherited from his father would not pass to his children. He also said Samsung would stop cracking down on workers ’attempts to organize unions, even though labor activists have questioned its sincerity.
It is not immediately clear what his prison sentence would mean for Samsung’s business. Samsung showed no specific signs of problems when Lee was in jail in 2017 and 2018. Prison sentences have never prevented Korean corporate leaders from transmitting their business decisions from bars.
The Supreme Court earlier this month upheld a 20-year prison sentence for Park for the Samsung case and other bribes and extortion while in office from 2013 to 2016.