A South Korean court on Monday acquitted the heir and de facto boss of the Samsung Group, Lee Jae-yong, who was being prosecuted for accounting fraud in connection with the merger of two companies of the group in 2015, the news agency reported Korean Yonhap.

According to Yonhap, the court found that there was no “intent to harm shareholders” through the merger, which, according to the heir’s critics, was intended in particular to ensure a smooth transfer of power to Mr. Lee, a descendant of Samsung’s founding family.

Mr. Lee was conditionally released in August 2021, after serving eighteen months in prison, just over half of the original sentence. In October 2022, he took over the executive presidency of Samsung Electronics, the jewel of the group, two months after the pardon granted by the President of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol.

Merger deemed “legitimate”

The Seoul Central District Court’s verdict clears him of several charges, including stock price rigging, breach of trust and accounting fraud, in the 2015 merger between two Samsung subsidiaries, Cheil Industries and Samsung C

“Consolidating control of Lee Jae-yong and ensuring his succession was not the sole purpose of the merger,” the court asserted, according to Yonhap, adding that there was “no validation to prove the charge.” .

“Today’s verdict clearly shows that the merger was legitimate. We sincerely thank the court for its sound judgment,” Lee Jae-yong’s lawyers said in a brief statement. Critics say 2015 merger deliberately undervalued Samsung C stock

A five-year sentence

The prosecution had requested a five-year sentence in its closing argument in November, even citing the feeling of undervaluation of South Korean companies on the global market. Lee Jae-yong, for his part, told the court that he was not motivated by “personal interest in the merger”.

“The court appears to have based its decision on the grounds that some of the evidence against Lee Jae-yong was collected without due process,” said Oh Se-hyung, director of the NGO Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice. “But that alone should not have given Lee a free pass, and I wonder if the prosecution did its best to hold him accountable,” he added.

The verdict was delivered almost three years after the first hearing for this case, which was followed by around a hundred others. This acquittal will allow Samsung Electronics, which supplies around 60% of memory chips to the global market, to “think about establishing long-term investment plans,” Kim Dae-Kim Dae told Agence France-Presse. jong, professor of business administration at Sejong University in Seoul.