Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong is sentenced to five years in prison.
SEOUL, South Korea — Samsung heir Lee Jaeyong, the de facto leader of South Korea’s most successful business group, was sentenced Friday to five years prison for offering bribes and other crimes.
Lee, 49, was groomed to lead the conglomerate that was founded by his grandfather and became such a dominating force in South Korea that it’s mockingly called “Republic of Samsung” by the public.
He took a higher profile role at the world’s largest maker of smartphones, television sets and microchips that power consumer electronics after his father suffered a heart attack in 2014 and was poised to cement control. Instead, at the end of last year Lee was implicated in a massive political scandal that culminated in President Park Geun-hye’s ouster.
The court said he was guilty of offering bribes to the former president and her close friend Choi Soonsil to facilitate a smooth handover of power at Samsung, which is a publicly traded company. Park and Choi are also on trial. A Samsung lawyer said the guilty verdict would be appealed.
It’s almost a rite of passage for the bosses of family-controlled South Korean conglomerates known as chaebol to go to prison for white-collar crimes only to later make a comeback. Some were pardoned and others got sentences reduced on appeal.
Lee’s father was twice convicted for tax evasion but received a special presidential pardon so he could help South Korea win its bid to host the Winter Olympics for the first time.
But the princeling’s case may be different because the public is increasingly unwilling to indulge the double standards long enjoyed by families who were lionized a generation ago for helping to turn South Korea into a manufacturing powerhouse.
Current president Moon Jae-in was elected on hopes his administration would end cozy ties between government and business and end the emperor-like rule of chaebol families.
“It’s an entirely different world now,” said Park Sang-in, a professor at Seoul National University. “The public’s perception of the problems at chaebol and the need to reform chaebol has significantly changed.”
Lee’s sentence is among the longest prison terms ever handed out in South Korea to a member of a prominent business family. Usually they get suspended sentences or pardons.
Civic groups said sentencing Lee to prison time was a meaningful step toward justice. But others thought the punishment was too light.
Samsung Electronics, the crown jewel of the Samsung group, has reported record profits despite Lee’s arrest in February and a damaging recall for Galaxy Note 7 phones that were prone to battery fires.
The financial success was largely thanks to events set in motion by Lee’s father in the 1990s. He made the decision to break into the memory chip industry and followed up with massive and risky investments that rivals could not match every year.