SC suspends jail term for SK Group chairman

The Supreme Court in Seoul, South Korea, has upheld an appellate court ruling that convicted the chairman of SK Group of breach of trust but suspended his prison term, citing his intentions to reform the family-run conglomerate. The ruling ended a five-year-long court battle for Chey Tae-won, whose young leadership has been tainted by civic accusations that he engineered the window dressing of accounts and profited from insider stock trading. The top court found Chey guilty, but upholding the Seoul High Court’s 2005 verdict, suspended his three-year prison sentence for five years in consideration of his pledge to enhance management transparency, according to the ruling issued by Presiding Judge Jeon Soo-ahn. In the first verdict by the Seoul Central District Court in 2004, Chey was sentenced to three years in jail. The rare prison sentence for a conglomerate head, however, was reduced to a suspended jail term in the High Court in 2005, whose judicial members are generally considered more conservative than the lower court. (May 29, 2008)