On the 11th, the prosecution investigating KT's alleged 'favoritism investment' conducted a search and seizure at the headquarters of Hyundai AutoEver.
The Fair Trade Investigation Division of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office (Chief Prosecutor Yong Seong-jin) sent prosecutors and investigators to three locations this morning: Hyundai AutoEver's headquarters, the cloud operations center, and the Samsung-dong office building, to secure internal documents.
The prosecution is reportedly seeking additional evidence following a search and seizure of the residences of former Hyundai AutoEver CEO Seo Jeong-sik and others on the 20th of last month. The investigation targets allegations of breach of trust under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes, concerning KT Cloud's purchase of Spark & Associates (Spark, now Open Cloud Lab), a vehicle cloud company established by Park Seong-bin, the brother-in-law of Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun, at a price higher than the normal market value.
In September last year, KT Cloud acquired 100% of Spark's shares for 20.68 billion KRW. The prosecution believes that Hyundai Motor paid a premium of several billion won as a favor in return for KT's acquisition of Airplug, a company owned by former KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo's brother, which was struggling financially in 2021.
Since Spark relies 100% on Hyundai AutoEver for its transaction volume, the prosecution suspects that Hyundai AutoEver was involved in the process of KT Cloud's acquisition of Spark.
In this regard, the prosecution intensified the investigation by conducting search and seizures at KT headquarters, KT Cloud, and Spark offices in August. On the 17th of last month, they searched the residences of two KT and KT Cloud employees involved in the Spark acquisition, and on the 20th, they searched the residences of former CEO Seo and four Spark affiliates.
Former CEO Seo resigned from his position on the 27th of last month.
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