Hyun-guk Jang, Former Wemade CEO, Acquitted Again in WEMIX Circulation Manipulation Appeal

Court: "No Intent to Artificially Boost Wemade's Stock Price"

Hyun-guk Jang, former CEO of Wemade and current CEO of Nexus, who was indicted on charges of manipulating the circulation volume of the cryptocurrency WEMIX, was acquitted again in the appeals trial.

Jang Hyunguk, former CEO of Wemade. Photo by Kang Jinhyung

On the 27th, the 13th Criminal Division of the Seoul High Court dismissed the prosecution's appeal against Jang and Wemade Co., Ltd., who were indicted for violating the Capital Markets Act, and upheld the not-guilty verdict from the first trial.

The court stated, "There is no objective correlation between the price of WEMIX and Wemade shares," and added, "The defendant had neither the intention nor the awareness to artificially boost Wemade's stock price."

The court further explained, "The correlation between Wemade's stock price and WEMIX, as claimed by the prosecution, does not constitute causation. The fact that both prices moved together appears to be because Wemade's global gaming ecosystem combined the two values. It is difficult to conclude that Wemade's stock price moved unilaterally based solely on the price of WEMIX."

Jang was indicted without detention in August last year on charges of gaining unquantifiable profits, such as stock price gains from Wemade and preventing a decline in the price of WEMIX coin. While serving as CEO of Wemade, he was accused of making a false announcement in early 2022 that the company would stop liquidating (cashing out) WEMIX coins, which allegedly led investors who believed the announcement to purchase WEMIX coins.

After initially listing WEMIX coins on a virtual asset exchange in October 2020 and seeing a sharp price increase, Wemade liquidated approximately 290 billion won worth of coins the following year. The funds were used for purposes such as acquiring other gaming companies.

WEMIX is a cryptocurrency designed to allow players to cash out assets earned in play-to-earn (P2E) games. In December 2022, WEMIX was delisted from the Digital Asset eXchange Alliance (DAXA) due to issues with public disclosure of its circulation volume. Although it was relisted on some exchanges, it was delisted again in May this year following a hacking incident and was removed from Korean won-based exchanges.

After leaving Wemade, Jang became CEO of the domestic game company Action Square earlier this year and changed its name to Nexus. Through its Swiss-based affiliate, Open Game Foundation (OGF), the company issued a new cryptocurrency called CROSS.

Previously, the Seoul Southern District Court acquitted Jang and Wemade in July.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.