Acquittals Bring Samsung Chairman's Decade of Legal Woes to an End
The court cleared the Samsung Electronics chairman, Lee Jae-yong, of accounting fraud and stock manipulation, lifting a cloud of uncertainty that has hovered over him as his company grapples with President Trump's tariffs and global competition in developing chips used for artificial intelligence.
Samsung is the most successful of the handful of family-owned conglomerates, known as chaebol, that have helped make South Korea a global export powerhouse and dominate the economy. Samsung Electronics alone accounts for nearly one-sixth of the country's total exports. But the company has also faced criticism and accusations of being above the law.
Over the past decade, Mr. Lee, the scion of the company's founding family, has appeared in court multiple times and even went to jail for bribing a former president before being pardoned.
The criminal charges in the case that ended Thursday stemmed from the 2015 merger of two Samsung subsidiaries, which helped cement his control of Samsung Electronics, as well as Samsung Group, South Korea's largest business conglomerate. Prosecutors accused Mr. Lee of illegally over- and underpricing the subsidiaries' stock prices and committing other criminal offenses during the merger.
In February 2024, a district court cleared Mr. Lee of all the charges, citing a lack of evidence. In February, the Seoul High Court upheld the district court's ruling by rejecting an appeal from the prosecutors. The Supreme Court's ruling on Thursday made Mr. Lee's acquittal final by endorsing the Seoul High Court's decision.
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