Samsung’s boss is sentenced to prison

SAMSUNG’S founding family, the Lees, have good reason to dislike room 417 of Seoul’s Central District Court. In 2008 it was where Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of the sprawling South Korean conglomerate, was found guilty of tax evasion. On August 25th his son, Lee Jae-yong, the vice-chairman of Samsung Electronics, stood in the same room and was sentenced to five years in prison on charges including bribery, embezzlement and perjury. The elder Mr Lee has been in hospital since suffering a heart attack in 2014. Samsung now lacks both its official and de facto bosses.

The younger Mr Lee, who plans to appeal against the verdict, was accused of paying bribes to Choi Soon-sil, a confidante of the country’s former president, Park Guen-hye. Prosecutors had argued that he hoped the payments would secure government support for an $8bn merger of two Samsung affiliates, Cheil Industries, the group’s unofficial holding company, and Samsung C&T, a construction firm. The state-run National Pension Service, the single biggest shareholder in C&T, voted for the plan in July 2015. The deal was controversial, but it helped Mr Lee consolidate his control over the group and clear the way for his succession.

The decision is a milestone in …read more