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(LEAD) Supreme Court confirms 'not guilty' verdict for former Samsung chairman
SEOUL, May 29 (Yonhap) -- The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court's not guilty verdict for former Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee, who was indicted last year on charges of illegally transferring wealth and managerial control of the conglomerate to his only son, Jae-yong, court officials said.
The ruling in favor of South Korea's most influential tycoon came after the top court overruled an appellate court's guilty verdict for two former Samsung executives charged with helping Jae-yong buy convertible bonds issued by Samsung Everland, the conglomerate's amusement park operator and de-facto holding company, at a below-market price in 1996.
The 67-year-old Lee was indicted in April of last year for incurring a loss of 97 billion won (US$77.6 million) to Samsung Everland by helping his son become the largest shareholder in the company through the 1996 discounted bond sale, but the lowers courts acquitted him of the criminal charges earlier this year.
While dismissing the charges related to the bond deal, Seoul's high court sentenced the tycoon to a three-year jail term, suspended for five years, and fined him 110 billion won for tax evasion.
Huh Tae-hak and Park Ro-bin, former chief executives of Samsung Everland, were also indicted last year for helping arrange the controversial convertible bond deals for the Lee family and were both convicted of breach of trust by the lower courts. A district court and an appellate court had handed down jail terms of two to three years to the two Samsung executives on charges of causing the company billions of won in losses.
Confirming Lee's not guilty verdict and overruling the guilty verdict for Huh and Park, the Supreme Court said Samsung Everland was not deemed to have suffered any loss from the 1996 bond deals, because its existing shareholders voluntarily chose not to buy the bonds up for sale at that time.
"The act of issuing convertible bonds as a means to transfer corporate management control infringes on the interests of the existing shareholders alone, not the interests of the company itself," said the Supreme Court in its ruling.
The elder Lee left Samsung's top management post in April 2008 after 20 years, as part of a groupwide restructuring plan announced at the peak of the controversial father-to-son succession of management control.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court overruled a lower court's not guilty verdict for Lee in a separate case involving the Lee family's opaque transactions in bonds with warrant (BWs) in Samsung SDS, a systems integration unit of Samsung Group.
The former chairman was indicted for incurring a loss of 154 billion won to Samsung SDS by forcing the company to sell its BWs to his son and daughters at a huge discount in 1999 but the lower courts found him not guilty in the case.
The lower courts had ruled that the statute of limitations expired in the Samsung SDS case as the amount of loss caused by the Lee family to the company was not estimated to exceed 5 billion won.
However, the Supreme Court ordered the lower courts to review the not guilty verdict for Lee in the Samsung SDS case, saying the amount of loss incurred to the Samsung affiliate should be recalculated.
"The court has to reevaluate the exact amount of loss to Samsung SDS as well as whether the BW transaction price involving the Lee family was fair," said the Supreme Court.
(END)
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