Koo Young-bae, Qoo10 CEO, Appears for Preliminary Hearing... "Learned After the Unsettled Payment Incident Occurred"

Court Holds 40-Minute Relay Hearings for Former Representative Ryu Hwa-hyun and Ryu Kwang-jin Following Previous Review

Gu Young-bae, CEO of Qoo10 Group and a key suspect in the large-scale unsettled payment scandal involving TMON and WEMAKEPRICE (Timep), appeared on the 10th for a pre-trial detention hearing at the court.

Shin Young-hee, the chief judge in charge of warrants at the Seoul Central District Court, conducted the pre-trial detention hearing for Gu, who is accused of violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes (breach of trust, fraud, embezzlement). The court is scheduled to review the issuance of detention warrants for Gu Young-bae, Ryu Hwa-hyun, CEO of WEMAKEPRICE, and Ryu Kwang-jin, CEO of TMON, at 40-minute intervals.

Gu Young-bae, CEO of Qoo10 Group, identified as the key suspect who triggered the large-scale unpaid settlement incident at TMON and WEMAKEPRICE, is attending the pre-arrest interrogation held at the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho-gu, Seoul on the 10th. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

Arriving at the court around 9:35 a.m., Gu responded to the question, "When did you become aware of the unsettled payment issue?" by saying, "I found out after the incident occurred." When asked, "Do you admit to the embezzlement of unsettled payments amounting to 1.5 trillion won?" he replied, "No," before heading into the courtroom.

Gu and others are accused of knowing that payment of settlement funds was difficult but continuing operations through 'reverse margin' and 'rolling over' methods, thereby embezzling settlement funds worth approximately 1.595 trillion won (fraud). They are also charged with breach of trust by misappropriating a total of 69.2 billion won from TMON and WEMAKEPRICE through practices such as 'internal transactions' to meet the Nasdaq listing conditions of their affiliate Qxpress. Additionally, they face allegations of embezzling a total of 67.1 billion won from TMON and WEMAKEPRICE funds for the acquisition of the U.S. e-commerce platform 'Wish' and other purposes.

Earlier, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office’s special investigation team for the TMON and WEMAKEPRICE scandal (led by Lee Jin-dong, head of the Anti-Corruption Investigation Division 1) requested a pre-trial detention warrant for Gu Young-bae due to the gravity of the case. The decision on whether to detain Gu and others is expected as early as tonight.