South Korean know-how tycoon, Kim Beom-su, who’s often known as Brian Kim, has been indicted on prices of inventory value manipulation.
Kakao executives led by Mr Kim have been accused of shopping for massive quantities of shares in Okay-pop company SM Leisure to inflate its inventory value and undermine a competing provide to take over the corporate.
Mr Kim, who based the web big Kakao, has been in detention since being arrested simply over two weeks in the past.
In an announcement across the time of his arrest, Kakao stated Mr Kim didn’t order or tolerate any criminality.
The Seoul Southern District Courtroom indicted Mr Kim on allegations that he broke monetary market guidelines.
The trial date can be set at a later stage, based on native studies.
The costs are associated to a bidding conflict that got here forward of Kakao shopping for a controlling stake in Okay-pop company SM Leisure of just about 40% in March final yr.
Prosecutors allege Mr Kim was concerned in a four-day shopping for spree of SM Leisure shares aimed to push up its inventory market valuation past the attain of a rival bidder Hybe, the company behind Okay-pop superstars BTS.
The case has despatched shockwaves by South Korea’s know-how trade, which has lengthy seen Mr Kim as a visionary web pioneer.
He’s essentially the most excessive profile tech govt to be positioned behind bars in South Korea since Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Jae-yong served 18 months in jail after being convicted in 2017 on bribery prices.
Mr Kim’s rise from humble beginnings to grow to be a multi-billionaire has made him massively fashionable in a rustic the place a number of family-run companies, often called chaebols, management a lot of the economic system.
He’s credited with founding and increasing Kakao, which is now certainly one of South Korea’s most profitable web companies.
Kakao runs South Korea’s largest messaging app, together with a rising checklist of different on-line companies that embrace gaming, buying and banking.
In 2022, a Kakao outage attributable to a fireplace that broken its servers raised issues about how reliant the nation had grow to be on the know-how big’s companies.
Simply hours earlier than Mr Kim’s indictment was introduced, Kakao reported working earnings of 134 billion gained for the second quarter of the yr, an 18.5% enhance from the identical interval final yr.
Extra reporting by Jake Kwon in Seoul
