A court in South Korea has sentenced Samsung’s billionaire heir-apparent Lee Jae-yong to five years in prison for corruption.<\/p>\n
Mr Lee was accused of bribery in a scandal that also saw the impeachment of South Korea’s former president.<\/p>\n
The case has gripped the public amid growing anger against South Korea’s biggest companies, known as chaebols.<\/p>\n
Mr Lee, who denied all charges, had faced a jail sentence of up to 12 years.<\/p>\n
Also known as Jay Y Lee, the de facto head of the world’s largest smartphone maker had been detained since February on a string of corruption charges.<\/p>\n
These included including bribery, embezzlement and hiding assets overseas.<\/p>\n
The 49-year-old was accused of giving donations worth 41bn won ($36m; \u00a329m) to non-profit foundations operated by Choi Soon-sil, a friend of South Korea’s former President Park Geun-hye, in return for political favours.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors alleged that the donations were made to Ms Park’s confidante to win government support for a big restructuring of Samsung that would strengthen Mr Lee’s control over Samsung Electronics.<\/p>\n
A lawyer for Mr Lee has said already said they will appeal against the decision.<\/p>\n
“We are confident the ruling will be overturned,” lawyer Song Wu-cheol told reporters after the ruling, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless this ruling represents a huge blow to South Korea’ biggest and most well-known business empire. Since the verdict, Samsung shares fell by 1%.<\/p>\n
The conviction raises questions about Mr Lee’s leadership of the conglomerate. He has been standing in as chairman since his father, Lee Kun-hee, suffered a heart attack in 2014.<\/p>\n
The Samsung scandal contributed to President Park’s eventual impeachment. Her friend Choi Soon-sil has\u00a0already been jailed for three years\u00a0for corruption.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A court in South Korea has sentenced Samsung’s billionaire heir-apparent Lee Jae-yong to five years in prison for corruption. Mr Lee was accused of bribery in a scandal that also saw the impeachment of South Korea’s former president. The case has gripped the public amid growing anger against South Korea’s biggest companies, known as chaebols. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[36,10515,10516,10517],"class_list":["post-347903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-corruption","tag-lee-jae-yong","tag-samsung-heir","tag-wu-cheol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=347903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=347903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=347903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=347903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}