Samsung Electronics vice chairman Jay Y. Lee, in jail after convictions for bribery, embezzlement and different costs, has certified for parole and is predicted to go away jail this Friday, South Korea’s justice ministry mentioned.
“The choice to grant Samsung Electronics vice chairman Jay Y. Lee parole was the results of a complete assessment of varied components akin to public sentiment and good conduct throughout detention,” the ministry mentioned in a press release on Monday.
Convicted of bribing a pal of former President Park Geun-hye, Lee, 53, has served 18 months of a revised 30 month sentence. He initially served one 12 months of a five-year sentence from August 2017 which was later suspended. That court docket determination was then overturned and whereas the sentence was shortened, he was despatched again to jail in January this 12 months.
Help for his parole, each political and public and from the broader enterprise group, had grown amid anxiousness that key strategic choices usually are not being made on the South Korean tech big.
Though the day-to-day operating of the world’s greatest reminiscence chipmaker and smartphone producer has not been affected by his absence, firm sources say choices on main funding and M&A initiatives ought to solely be made by Lee.
Particularly, a call on the situation of a $17 billion U.S. plant to provide superior logic chips awaits his return at a time when there’s a international chip scarcity and rivals like TSMC and Intel Corp are making giant investments.
The Federation of Korean Industries, an enormous enterprise foyer, mentioned in a press release that it welcomed the choice to grant Lee parole.
“If the funding clock, at present at standstill, will not be wound up shortly, we may lag behind international firms akin to Intel and TSMC and lose the Korean economic system’s bread and butter at a second’s discover.”
Lee nonetheless wants the Justice Minister to approve his return to work because the regulation bars individuals with sure convictions from working for firms associated to these convictions for 5 years.
He’s more likely to get that, authorized specialists say, because of circumstances akin to the quantity deemed embezzled having been repaid.
Samsung Electronics declined to remark.
HIGH SUPPORT
South Korea’s greatest conglomerates are nonetheless owned and managed by their founding households and there’s little priority for handing over the reins to outsiders even when a senior member of the family has been jailed.
Whereas polls confirmed excessive public help of round 70% for Lee’s parole, many civic teams have been opposed, accusing the administration of President Moon Jae-In of hypocrisy after it got here to energy on a wave of anger at corruption amongst South Korea’s political and enterprise elite.
“If the administration that benefited grants preferential parole for a chaebol proprietor, we should rethink the very existence of the Moon Jae-in administration,” mentioned Kim Ju-ho, official at activist group Individuals’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, utilizing the native time period for big family-owned companies.
Lee’s authorized woes haven’t been confined to the bribery conviction. He’s additionally on trial accused of accounting fraud and inventory worth manipulation linked to a 2015 merger of two Samsung firms.
A South Korean court docket additionally determined in June that he must be tried in separate case during which he has been accused of unlawfully utilizing a sedative.
Lee has denied the accusations in each instances.
FbTwitterLinkedin
