Seoul, Feb 5: A South Korean appeals court Monday dismissed most of Samsung heir Lee Jae-Yong’s bribery convictions and cut his prison sentence to a suspended term, ordering his immediate release.
Judges said Lee, vice chairman of the world’s biggest smartphone and memory chip maker Samsung Electronics, had been forced to offer bribes to then-president Park Geun-Hye and her close confidante. Samsung Electronics, which last week reported record profits, is the flagship subsidiary of the giant Samsung group, by far the biggest of the family-controlled conglomerates known as chaebols that dominate Asia’s fourth- largest economy.
The chaebols played key roles in the South’s dramatic economic growth but have long had close and sometimes murky ties with political authorities. Commentators said today’s decision was in keeping with past lenient legal treatment of their leaders. At his original trial Lee, 49, was convicted of a range of offences, including bribery, embezzlement, money laundering and perjury in parliament, in connection with the sprawling corruption scandal that brought down Park Geun-Hye. The case centred on payments Samsung made to Park’s secret confidante Choi Soon-Sil, with prosecutors arguing they were intended to secure government favours.
He had been sentenced to five years in jail, making him the first Samsung chief to serve prison time, even though his father was twice convicted of criminal offences and his grandfather was earlier embroiled in scandal. But the Seoul high court on Monday struck out most of the convictions and reduced the penalty on the remainder to a suspended prison sentence of two and a half years. The court said Lee had been “forced” to offer Park bribes and there was “no evidence” that Lee explicitly demanded policy favours in return.
AFP