Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong, who is also de facto the boss, will not appeal his two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for corruption, his lawyer announced on Monday, which deprives the South Korean giant of its main decision-maker.
Mr. Lee Jae-yong, who is officially the vice president of Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of cellphones and memory chips, was convicted of corruption and embezzlement in the massive scandal that precipitated impeachment in 2017 and the incarceration of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
After a long legal process that Samsung has dragged along like a ball, and therefore after a new trial, the grandson of the founder of the Samsung group was sentenced last week to two and a half years in prison by the district court central seoul
The choice not to appeal could mean the tech giant wants to turn the page on this infamous scandal. Given the time he has already spent behind bars, Mr. Lee could apply for parole as early as September, on condition that the prosecution does not decide on a new appeal to seek a longer sentence.
“Vice President Lee will humbly accept the decision and has decided not to appeal,” his lawyer Lee In-jae said in a statement.
The 52-year-old boss was imprisoned for the first time in 2017. He was released the following year when the court had on appeal cleared most of the offenses and sentenced him to a suspended sentence. But the Supreme Court then ordered a new trial.
He has served approximately one year in detention and will complete his sentence by July 2022 at the latest, if by then he does not obtain his parole, if his sentence is not commuted or if he is not pardoned. .
Samsung is by far the largest of the “chaebols”, those family industrial empires that dominate the 12th Mondial economy. Its overall turnover represents one fifth of South Korea’s GDP and is therefore crucial to the country’s economic health.
Some analysts have estimated that Mr. Lee’s incarceration would create a vacuum that could affect the decision-making process at the head of the group, especially on major future investments.
The case involves millions of dollars the group had paid to the president’s shadow confidante, Choi Soon-sil. Bribes which were according to the accusation intended to facilitate the transfer of power to the head of the conglomerate, while the father of Mr. Lee, Lee Kun-hee, the architect of the global take-off of the group, was bedridden after a heart attack in 2014.
The Supreme Court definitively confirmed in mid-January the sentence of ex-President Park to 20 years in prison.