SEOUL– A former chairman of Leed Corp. funded by the scandal-ridden Lime Asset Management was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of embezzlement and bribery Friday.

The Seoul Southern District Court found the man surnamed Kim guilty of embezzling an estimated 1.79 billion won (US$1.58 million) and bribing the hedge fund’s former Vice President Lee Jong-pil and a former official at Shinhan Investment Corp. to get investment funds. Lee was convicted in January of defrauding his clients and taking bribes worth 1.4 billion won from the display equipment maker Leed.

Kim was also found guilty of receiving 2.5 billion won in return for working as a middleman helping Kosdaq-listed firms invested by Lime get investment money from financial institutions.

“The accused siphoned off billions of won by using greedy corporate raiders and corrupt workers at financial companies,” the court said in a verdict. “His crimes take up considerable parts of the Lime scandal.”

The court also ordered him to pay a forfeiture of 2.5 billion won.

Leed was established in 2000 and listed on the tech-heavy Kosdaq market in 2015, but it was delisted in May 2020, after its business malpractices came to light. It received billions of won in investment from the hedge fund without due process.

Lime has been under probe over selling and running fraudulent financial products and subsequent suspension of fund redemption worth an estimated 1.6 trillion won.

The fraud scandal involving Lime has roiled the nation since last year and developed into a high-profile lobbying scandal, in which former and incumbent government officials and politicians are implicated. Last month, a former senior prosecutor was sentenced to three years in prison for taking bribes from a real estate developer financed by the hedge fund in 2019.

Source: Yonhap News Agency