The appellate court in the case of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong’s ‘unfair merger suspicion between Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries’ has decided to proceed with the trial aiming for a verdict before the end of January next year.
Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong is leaving the courthouse after being acquitted in the first trial for charges related to unfair mergers and accounting fraud in the Samsung Group's management succession case at the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on the afternoon of February 5. [Photo by Yonhap News]
On the 22nd, the Criminal Division 13 of the Seoul High Court (Presiding Judges Baek Gang-jin, Kim Seon-hee, and Lee In-su) held the second preparatory hearing for the appeal trial of Chairman Lee, who was indicted on charges including violation of the Capital Markets Act, and announced this plan. Since the preparatory hearing does not require the defendant’s attendance, Chairman Lee did not appear in court that day.
The court plans to conduct evidence examination related to the first trial’s judgment that materials obtained from the 2019 search and seizure of Samsung Biologics and Epis servers were illegally collected, during the first formal trial session scheduled for September 30. On October 14, the court will review the accounting fraud charges. On October 28 and November 11, the court will examine the charges related to violations of the Capital Markets Act. On November 25, the court plans to complete the proceedings by making judgments on the prosecution’s detailed charges and the sentencing requests for each defendant.
The court stated, “We are not sure if our panel will be the one to deliver the verdict, but the sentencing date will be before the judicial personnel reshuffle (scheduled for the end of January),” adding, “We can secure two months from the conclusion of the proceedings to the sentencing date.”
The prosecution presented 2,144 additional pieces of evidence in the appeal trial. The defense agreed with this evidence but submitted to the court that a significant portion of it constitutes illegally obtained evidence.
Earlier, Chairman Lee was indicted in September 2020 on charges of involvement in various fraudulent transactions, market manipulation, and accounting fraud orchestrated by the group’s Future Strategy Office to ensure stable succession of management rights at minimal cost and strengthen control during the 2015 merger of Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries. However, the first trial court acquitted him of all 19 charges on February 5, three years and five months after the indictment.
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