Bribes amounting to 22 million euros are said to have flowed. The judgment is final.
Samsung company logo.
After sentencing to two and a half years in prison for corruption, heir to the Samsung corporate empire, Lee Jae Yong, does not want to contest the verdict. His client respects the court's decision, Lee's lawyer Lee In Jae said on Monday, according to reports from South Korean broadcasters and the national news agency Yonhap. The background to the proceedings was a major corruption affair involving former President Park Geun Hye.
According to the reports, the public prosecutor's office is also waiving an appeal. The judgment in the retrial against the 52-year-old vice chairman of the smartphone market leader Samsung Electronics is final. Since Lee had already been in prison for a year after the initial trial, he can be released in July of the following year, unless he has already received a sentence.
In the reopened trial, the Seoul High Court sentenced the manager to another prison term last week. The court found it proven that the de facto head of the Samsung group had offered the former president and one of her confidants money to get political support for the transfer of power within the group. Lee is the son of former CEO Lee Kun Hee, who died in October. According to investigators, almost 30 billion won (22.31 million euros) in bribes should have flowed.
Several times convicted
Lee had already been sentenced to five years in prison in 2017 for bribery, breach of trust and perjury. A year later, his sentence was downgraded to suspended sentence, and Lee was released. Separate from the closed case, Lee is under investigation on allegations of stock price manipulation and breach of audit regulations.
