By Kim Se-jeong
Victims of suspected poisoning by humidifier sterilizers and a civic group filed a complaint against the Lotte Group founder family ― Shin Kyuk-ho, the founder, and his two sons, Dong-joo and Dong-bin ― for making and selling harmful products, Monday.
The Shin family has managed Lotte Shopping, one of the group’s subsidiaries, since 2005. The three were among 43 former and current executives of the company against whom the victims filed complaints.
This is the first time for the victims to file a complaint against Lotte Shopping, which made and sold the sterilizer through its Lotte Mart unit. Previously, the victims focused their legal actions on Reckitt Benckiser, which is allegedly responsible for the largest number of deaths in the humidifier sterilizer scandal.
The victims asked the prosecution to summon them for questioning and impose overseas travel bans on them.
“The British company Reckitt Benckiser is the name people remember the most when it comes to the scandal,” the Asian Citizen’s Center for Environment and Health said in a statement during a rally outside Lotte Department Store in central Seoul. “But Lotte is also responsible for the deaths and for causing people to get sick, and we want everybody to remember that too.”
The center said it would file new complaints against other Korean companies soon.
Lotte Shopping sold the product for almost six years between 2005 and August 2011. It is uncertain how many were sold during that time but the product was the cause for at least 32 deaths, according to the center.
Earlier this month, the victims filed a complaint against 29 employees of Reckitt Benckiser. Last week, the prosecution banned the former head of Reckitt Benckiser Korea, Shin Hyun-woo, from traveling abroad.
The ongoing scandal, in which 143 people have died, involves 13 companies.
The scandal surfaced in August 2011 when the government announced chemicals used in humidifier sterilizers were the cause of several deaths from lung failure. Most of the victims were pregnant women and children.