Booyoung chairman arrested for allegedly stealing billions from own company
Booyoung Chairman Lee Joong-keun heads to court in Seoul, Tuesday, pending deliberations on his arrest as requested by prosecutors for a wide range of alleged white-collar crimes. The court issued the warrant and Lee was put behind bars. Yonhap
By Oh Young-jin
Booyoung Group Chairman Lee Joong-keun was arrested Wednesday for allegedly siphoning off 1 trillion won by inflating construction costs and embezzling corporate funds of tens of billions of won, plus tax evasion.
The arrest of the head of the real estate chaebol, which specializes in apartment buildings, came days after the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office’s request for the warrants. Booyoung, with some 22 trillion won in assets, is the nation's 16th-largest conglomerate. The court granted the request citing the risk of evidence destruction.
The National Tax Service filed a complaint with the prosecution in April last year, after a tax probe into Booyoung and its chief.
The Fair Trade Commission, the state antitrust watchdog, also requested a prosecution investigation into suspicions that Lee avoided regulations by falsifying ownership disclosures for companies run by his relatives.
Yonhap said he was suspected of secretly transferring a slush fund worth some 270 billion won ($U.S.250 million) to an account in Cambodia.