Just a couple of minutes ago, Seoul High Court found Lone Star NOT guilty of manipulating the stock price of KEB’s former credit card unit.
UPDATE: From the Korea Times:
Lone Star Korea head Yoo Hoe-won was cleared of charges of stock price manipulation at a Seoul appeals court, a ruling that could empower the U.S. equity fund to proceed with the sale of the Korea Exchange Bank (KEB) to HSBC Holdings.
The Seoul High Court reduced a lower court’s sentence of five years imposed on Yoo to two-and-a-half years suspended for three years.
The court cleared Yoo of charges that he spread false rumors of a capital reduction at the KEB’s credit card unit being imminent. “Lone Star then had seriously considered reducing capital of KEB. The prosecutor’s claim that Lone Star spread false rumors is not convincing,” presiding judge Ko Yue-young said in the ruling.
The ruling couldn’t have come at a better time, with the Korea Times — citing “informed sources” — reporting that foreign funds are leaving Korea.
25 Comments
Well in this case (and long last) the system worked.
expat community:
issue the entire korean people an apology.
pie in yo face.
It’s not over: In Korea, an appeal to the Supreme Court is much more likely to ensue. Almost 25,000 verdicts per year issue from the Korean Supreme Court, as compared to about 50 in the United States. The prosecution will undoubtedly appeal this verdict.
Sharp observers will note that this also means no double jeopardy. Both the prosecution and the defense have the right of appeal in criminal matters, if they are dissatisfied with either the verdict or the sentence imposed. The State gets three whacks at the accused.
Here is a link to a Reuters article in the New York Times about it.
“Lone Star Cleared of KEB Unit Price Manipulation”
Pawi,
It was all a farce in the first place. It is Korea that needs to be making an apology. Now let’s see if Korea will let Lone Star sell its stake in KEB to HSBC. That is the real test. Preventing Lone Star from selling its stake in KEB is what this whole farce has been about from the beginning.
#3 BC: Where do you find these guys??
robert, i hope you don’t mind me putting this hear but i think you might be interested. since i can’t put a link up go to npr to have a listen to a report on korea and multi culturalism.
World
South Korea Tackles Multiculturalism
by Anthony Kuhn
If the verdict is appealed, could prosecutors be allowed once again to hold and question Grayken for discovery purposes?
Maybe the Hebei is off the hook too. http://english.chosun.com/w21d.....40014.html
The appeal will be a paper exercise, with both sides submitting final briefs and the Supremes going over everything already submitted, so no more witnesses. As Esq. Carr says, they do 25,000 cases a year.
Law students tend to be pretty effusive whenever they run into anyone who is willing to help them out. Most of the time law students get the cold shoulder. Unless attending one of the permanent overclass of 10 top law schools, there is a lot of rejection in their lives. I’m warm and affirming — as you regular Marmot’s Hole readers well know — so that kind of praise finds me pretty regularly.
There’s a lawyer named Tim O’Brien who, while a partner at the very prestigious Coudert Brothers (he’s at Kim & Chang here in Seoul now), generously helped me with a law-school research project. I’m sure I was a nuisance to him, but Tim was so willing to help me that it left an indelible impression on me. If I could be half the gentleman he was (is), that would be enough.
My post on How to Get a Job at a Korean Law Firm is one of the most frequently visited, right after the Google searches for “Rekha Sharma Nude“.
Korea Law Blog has more Rekha Sharma nude content than any other blog.
Damn! Got suckered into that one by Brendon.
Too little too late. Read this part of the article:
“This is not a government policy matter but a matter of the social environment and it frightens investors.
As shown by the US beef debacle…
Lee Myung Bak can change the policies all he wants and perhaps try to undo some of the damages that Roh Mu Hyun’s administration did. But it would be very difficult to change the mindset of a society though.
There’s no way this dies here. The prosecutor lost face, so honour demands he has to appeal and appeal until all avenues are exhausted. Lone Star will be cleared in the end, but it’s going to drag on forever.
Give credit to Lee’s government though. He got his work cut out for the next 5 years. But five years won’t be nearly enough. That’s because S.Korea has to go back to the basics right, starting with education and undo the 10 years of left wing education.
Well I suppose I should say “isn’t this the typical pattern” - a retraction long after the damage has been done and the myth is firmly embedded in the social psyche.
But I have decided to be positive today. And this is a good development.
Well I suppose I should observe that this is the typical pattern - a retraction long after the damage has been done and the myth allowed to embed itself in the collective psyche.
But I have decided to remain positive. So let me say to foreign businesses looking to establish a position in Korea, long after you are dragged through the ordeals of a storm trooper investigation and litigation, you can look forward to being vindicated on a story burried somewhere in the local paper.
it’s probably already too late for Korea’s reputation as a wannabe FDI hub:
from the Korea Times: “Foreign Funds Leave Korea”
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/ww.....26434.html
Rob, did you read the comments? That guy Globetrotter is hilarious. The whole thing about the paddle keeps sneaking up on me and cracking me up while I’m cooking dinner.
Every few weeks I see foreign companies in Korea being sued/fined/investigated. Intel (those known crooks!) are the latest to violate some Korean ordinance for doing standard business.
#2 Pawi seems to be getting his self-delusion coaching straight from Robert Mugabe.
It`s got nothing to do with multiculturalism. Don`t you know that the Roh government used nationalism and xenophobia to divert the public`s attention away from the fact that it was doing a lousy job?
See “Foreign Funds Leave Korea” in today’s KT:
http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/ne.....26434.html
Lone Star is already out of here . . .
So what do they still have this guy on? I notice that the sentence was reduced to a 2.5 year suspended, which implies that he’s still been found guilty of something…
He’s got to be guilty of something…
WIIIIITCH! He’s a WITCH!!
Paul Yoo was found guilty of some supposed misconduct in relation to other deals he worked on, and for failure to appear when summoned to testify to the National Assembly in respect of the witch hunt against Yoo and Lone Star. As it cannot be denied that he did, in fact, not turn up when summoned to the National Assembly, a conviction on that point was unavoidable.
As for the supposed misconduct — I don’t know or care about it. But if in fact truly guilty, it was undoubtedly something ticky-tack and probably even inadvertent. The “rules” are not exactly clearly-disclosed here (made up on the spot is more like it), and where Hyundai chairman Chung Mong-Koo gets sentenced to change a few diapers when convicted of embezzling millions, the suspended sentence seems appropriate.
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