By Joyce Lee
SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korean prosecutors will appeal to the Supreme Court after an appeals court found Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee not guilty on all charges stemming from a 2015 merger, prosecutors said.
Lee has faced long-running legal risks from criminal cases at a time when Samsung Electronics, the world’s top memory chip and smartphone maker, grapples with growing competition and lacklustre stock prices.
Samsung declined to comment.
The Seoul High Court upheld on February 3 a lower court’s ruling dismissing all the charges from a case involving a $8-billion, 2015 merger between two Samsung affiliates that prosecutors said was designed to cement Lee’s control of the tech giant.
Lee had denied wrongdoing, saying he never intended to “deceive or damage investors for personal gain”.
The appeals court dismissed prosecutors’ claims that the merger caused financial losses to minority shareholders.
For nearly a decade, Lee has faced legal challenges, including those related to the merger that paved the way for his succession after his father, Lee Kun-hee, had a heart attack in 2014 that left him in a coma.
He served a combined 18 months in jail on bribery charges before he was released in 2021 as part of a scandal that led to massive protests and ultimately brought down then-President Park Geun-hye in 2017.
(Reporting by Joyce Lee. Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Potter)
