LG Family Scion Koo Bon-hyun Repatriated From Cambodia After Eight Years on the Run: Detained Over Stock Manipulation and Embezzlement Allegations
The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency announced on November 13 that Koo Bon-hyun, 57, a third-generation member of the extended LG family and a former chief executive of EXA E&C, had been apprehended in Cambodia after eight years abroad, forcibly repatriated to South Korea on November 9 and arrested on arrival. A court issued a detention warrant on November 11 and he is now in custody. Police said he has admitted most of the allegations while saying he did not act alone and had accomplices.
Police allege that between February 2016 and December 2017 Koo used a nominee investment company to acquire two KOSDAQ-listed companies without his own capital, borrowed against those companies' shares to buy unlisted firms, and filed false favourable disclosures that presented the purchases as equity-financed, pushing up the share prices before selling nominee-held shares. Prosecutors initially estimated his illicit gains at about 14.5 billion won, although a court in his accomplices' case could not determine that exact figure. Police also allege he embezzled 4.6 billion won of affiliate funds for personal entertainment and the like, and caused 12.3 billion won in breach-of-trust losses through uncollateralised lending of affiliate funds and unauthorised pledging of corporate shares. He is suspected of fraudulent unfair trading under the Capital Markets Act and of embezzlement and breach of trust under the Act on Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes.
According to police, Koo left for the Netherlands in October 2018 while the Financial Supervisory Service was investigating, before prosecutors opened their inquiry, then moved through France and Thailand and entered Cambodia before his passport was invalidated. An arrest warrant was issued in May 2019 and an Interpol Red Notice followed. On August 25 this year, Cambodian police apprehended him during intensified checks amid a local crackdown on voice-phishing and romance-scam crimes, and Korea then completed the repatriation. Police said he had lived with local residents in Cambodia and that no helper in his evasion has been identified.
It is not Koo's first stock manipulation case: he was convicted of manipulating shares while acquiring an advanced-materials company for illicit gains of about 13.9 billion won, and the Supreme Court upheld a three-year prison sentence in 2012. Police plan to refer the case to prosecutors next week and are considering a forfeiture-preservation application to stop the alleged proceeds being moved.
(Source: Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency)
Source: Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：首尔警察厅大楼（CC BY-SA 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons）。 / Photo: The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency headquarters (CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons).
