14 DAY TRIAL // A court of law in South Korea has recently found Lee Kun-Hee, former Samsung chairman, guilty of tax evasion and security law violations and consequently issued appropriate punitive measures. Lee will have to pay a hefty fine in excess of $100 million and spend 3 years in prison, a sentence that the 66 year old man will not serve because it is a suspended one. Thanks to Kim Yong Chul, a former Samsung lawyer, it came to light that Lee had stashed away a staggering ?2 billion in assets.
Min Byung-hun, Judge of the Seoul Central District Court, had this to say before publicly announcing the outcome of the trial: "His crime is not serious enough to sentence him to prison." The judge also acquitted Lee of breach of trust charges.
For the past twenty years Lee Kun-Hee has been running Samsung, company that his father founded in the 1930s. During the two decades while he has been controlling the company, it has become a Korean success story, a worldwide known conglomerate. Following the court's sentence, Lee Kun-Hee resigned from the position he occupied in the company and has expressed his deepest regrets in regard to "causing trouble to the people".
It must be noted that the prosecution demanded a much harder punishment consisting of a $347 million fine and 7 years incarceration time. The court partly agreed to the fine, but did not believe the elderly businessman should go to jail.
This is not the first time that the captain of industry appears in a court of law. Twelve years ago he was found guilty of bribing two former South Korean presidents, for which he received a 2-year sentence, also suspended.
Kim Sang-jo, trade professor at Hansung University in South Korea, had this to comment about the court's ruling: "This is a shameful ruling. With this, Korean society will have to pay even more than it has during the past 10 years." Numerous civic activists have publicly expressed the fact that they consider the ruling "shameful".