Kim Beom-su, the chairman of the management innovation committee and founder of Kakao, who is accused of 'stock price manipulation of SM Entertainment,' was arrested on the 23rd.
Kakao founder and Management Innovation Committee Chairman Kim Beom-su, who is considered the pinnacle of the 'SM stock manipulation' suspicion, is attending the detention hearing (warrant review) held at the Southern District Court in Yangcheon-gu, Seoul on the 22nd. Photo by Kim Hyun-min kimhyun81@
The Seoul Southern District Court announced that it issued an arrest warrant for Chairman Kim at around 1:10 a.m. that day. Judge Han Jeong-seok, in charge of the warrant, stated, "There is a concern that evidence may be destroyed and a risk of flight."
Chairman Kim is accused of manipulating the stock price of SM to keep it higher than the public tender offer price (120,000 KRW) in order to block HYBE's public tender offer during the acquisition competition over SM in February last year. The prosecution requested an arrest warrant for Chairman Kim on the 17th on charges of violating the Capital Markets Act.
Chairman Kim appeared at the Seoul Southern District Court at 2 p.m. the previous day for the pre-arrest suspect interrogation (warrant hearing). It was 13 days after he was summoned and investigated by the prosecution on the 9th. During the approximately 3 hours and 30 minutes of the hearing, the investigation team of the Financial Investigation Division 2 of the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office reportedly prepared a presentation material of about 200 pages to explain the necessity of the arrest.
Chairman Kim's side admitted that it is true they were briefed on matters related to the purchase of SM shares but denied the charges, stating that they never approved illegal stock price manipulation.
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