Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, heart, arrives on the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. A Seoul court docket acquitted Lee of economic crimes.

Ahn Young-joon/AP

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Ahn Young-joon/AP

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, heart, arrives on the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. A Seoul court docket acquitted Lee of economic crimes.

Ahn Young-joon/AP

SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean court docket on Monday acquitted Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong of economic crimes involving a contentious merger between Samsung associates in 2015 that tightened his grip over South Korea’s greatest firm.

The ruling by the Seoul Central District Court may ease the authorized troubles surrounding the Samsung inheritor lower than two years after he was pardoned of a separate conviction of bribery in a corruption scandal that helped topple a earlier South Korean authorities.

The court docket mentioned the prosecution didn’t sufficiently show the merger between Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries was unlawfully carried out with an purpose to strengthen Lee’s management over Samsung Electronics.

Prosecutors had sought a five-year jail time period for Lee, who was accused of inventory value manipulation and accounting fraud. It wasn’t instantly clear whether or not they would attraction. Lee had denied wrongdoing within the present case, describing the 2015 merger as “normal business activity.”

Lee, 55, didn’t reply questions from reporters as left the court docket. You Jin Kim, Lee’s lawyer, praised the ruling, saying it confirmed that the merger was authorized.

Lee, a third-generation company inheritor who was formally appointed because the chairman of Samsung Electronics in October 2022, has led the Samsung group of corporations since 2014, when his late father, former chairman Lee Kun-hee, suffered a coronary heart assault.

Lee Jae-yong served 18 months in jail after being convicted in 2017 over separate bribery prices associated to the 2015 deal. He was initially sentenced for 5 years in jail for providing 8.6 billion gained ($6.4 million) value of bribes to then-President Park Geun-hye and her shut confidante to win authorities assist for the 2015 merger, which was key to strengthening his management over the Samsung enterprise empire and solidifying the father-to-son management succession.

Park and her confidante have been additionally convicted within the scandal and enraged South Koreans staged huge protests for months demanding an finish to the shady ties between enterprise and politics. The demonstrations ultimately led to Park’s ouster from workplace.

Lee was launched on parole in 2021 and pardoned by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in August 2022, in strikes that prolonged a historical past of leniency towards main white-collar crime in South Korea and preferential remedy for convicted tycoons.

Some shareholders had opposed the 2015 merger, saying that it unfairly benefited the Lee household whereas hurting minority shareholders.

There was additionally public anger over how the nationwide pension fund’s stake in Samsung C&T, the merged entity, fell by an estimated a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars}, after Park had pressured the National Pension Service to assist the deal.

Prosecutors have argued that Lee and different Samsung officers triggered harm to shareholders of Samsung C&T, which was a serious development firm, by manipulating company property to engineer a merger that was favorable to Cheil, an amusement park and clothes firm the place Lee had been the most important shareholder.

Prosecutors additionally claimed that Samsung executives, via accounting fraud, inflated the worth of Samsung Biologics, a Cheil subsidiary, by greater than 4 trillion gained ($3 billion) in an effort to make the deal look honest.

In Monday’s ruling, the court docket mentioned the prosecution’s proof wasn’t sufficient to ascertain that the 2015 merger was carried out via unlawful steps or served the only function of strengthening Lee’s management over Samsung Electronics, saying broader enterprise concerns have been seemingly concerned. The court docket mentioned it was unclear that the deal’s situations unfairly damage the pursuits of shareholders and added that prosecutors didn’t show that Samsung officers dedicated accounting fraud.

South Korean company leaders usually obtain comparatively lenient punishments for corruption, enterprise irregularities and different crimes, with judges usually citing considerations for the nation’s economic system.

Lee has been navigating one in every of his hardest stretches because the chief of one of many world’s largest makers of laptop chips and smartphones, with Russia’s warfare on Ukraine and different geopolitical turmoil hurting the world economic system and deflating know-how spending.

The firm final week reported an annual 34% decline in working revenue for October-December quarter as sluggish calls for for its TVs and different shopper electronics merchandise offset hard-won features from a slowly revering reminiscence chip market.