ISTANBUL
A South Korean court on Monday upheld the acquittal of Samsung Electronics CEO Lee Jae-yong in connection with alleged accounting fraud tied to the 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates.
The Seoul High Court said Lee was acquitted of charges of accounting fraud, stock manipulation, and other suspicious irregularities, Kyodo News reported.
The charges related to the merger of Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T in 2015, in which Lee was suspected of taking over South Korea’s largest conglomerate for an artificially low price.
The court said that the merger of two companies had been carried out with the “consent of two companies” and rejected claims that Samsung’s headquarters had unilaterally taken the decision to merge.
The merger was seen as an important part of Lee Jae-yong’s succession to the family-controlled group after his father, Lee Kun-hee, suffered a heart attack in 2014 that left him comatose.
Last February, a lower court cleared Lee Jae-yong of all 19 charges related to the merger, ruling that there was no evidence of wrongdoing in the succession process.
