Kijun Times
Lotte Chemical chief avoids arrest |
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| 이름 | 임서영 | 등록일 | 16.08.21 | 조회수 | 724 |
 Huh Soo-youngBy Lee Kyung-min A district court rejected a request from the prosecution to issue an arrest warrant for Lotte Chemical Chairman Huh Soo-young, 65, citing a lack of evidence, Friday. The Seoul Central District Court dismissed the request early Friday citing a lack of grounds to arrest Huh, the chief of Lotte Group’s key subsidiary, given the ongoing dispute over his culpability in his alleged corrupt activities. The prosecution had sought an arrest warrant for Huh on suspicion that he managed to receive a 27 billion won ($24 million) tax refund from the government by forging documents after colluding with former Lotte Chemical chief Ki Joon between April 2006 and March 2007. Ki, who had been arrested, was indicted on charges of tax evasion last Thursday. Huh is also suspected of evading taxes worth 1.3 billion won and receiving tens of millions of won in bribes from his subcontractors in return for granting them business favors. Another suspicion is that Huh offered tens of millions of won in bribes to tax officials asking them to stop a tax audit of Lotte Chemical. Huh is the second key executive among Lotte subsidiaries to avoid arrest following Lotte Homeshopping CEO Kang Hyun-koo; the district court last month rejected a request from the prosecution for a warrant for Kang. Kang was suspected of bribing officials of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning to obtain the ministry’s approval needed to be renewed every five years in order to continue the business, as well as creating a slush fund worth 900 million won. The court’s refusal to issue the warrants deals a major blow to the prosecution’s drive to expand its investigation into the nation’s fifth-largest conglomerate over alleged group-wide corruption, zeroing in on group chairman Shin Dong-bin in particular. Prosecutors planned to question Huh on whether Shin was aware of, or involved in, creating a 20 billion won slush fund by helping a Lotte affiliate in Japan receive a commission fee after including him as a middleman when Lotte Chemical imported raw materials from Japan. The prosecution suspected that most of the slush fund was managed by Shin. |
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