Police probe mysterious sales of jailed EcoPro founder's shares
EcoPro founder Lee Dong-chae
A police investigation is underway over a series of attempts last week to sell 2.5 billion won ($1.9 million) worth of EcoPro stocks owned by Lee Dong-chae, the company’s imprisoned founder, according to the battery materials firm, Tuesday.
EcoPro suspects that someone hacked into Lee’s account and tried to sell 2,955 stocks among some 5 million stocks owned by him. These attempts were made on Oct. 16, 17 and 19. Lee has been jailed since May on charges of insider trading in 2020 to 2021 which allowed him to make 1.1 billion won in illicit profits.
“We detected the attempts after a notification from the securities firm (which issued Lee’s account),” EcoPro said in a press release. “We told the securities firm that Lee had no intention to sell his shares.”
The company added that all of Lee’s accounts were frozen in order to prevent additional suspicious activities. The 2.5 billion won did not flow out of his account.
Following EcoPro’s announcement, the company’s stock price dropped sharply from 730,000 won to 685,000 won on Tuesday morning, but it bounced back in the afternoon, closing at 752,000 won, up 3.01 percent from the previous session’s closing price.
There is a speculation that one of Lee’s acquaintances may have tried to sell the stocks, given that securities industry insiders claim that it is almost impossible for a hacker to access an account issued by a major securities firm. Under the current system, multi-factor authentication and identification are needed for online stock trading.
Some market observers raised questions on why the hacker did not try to sell a larger amount of Lee's EcoPro shares.
However, EcoPro declined to disclose the securities firm’s name, citing the founder’s privacy.
It also noted that its announcement on the recent sale of Lee’s stocks is subject to change, depending on the results of the ongoing police investigation.