SEOUL– A former senior executive of Kumho Asiana Group was sentenced by a court Friday to two years in prison for bribing a former Fair Trade Commission (FTC) official to delete FTC documents unfavorable to the conglomerate.
The Seoul Central District Court handed down the prison sentence to the former executive surnamed Yun after finding him guilty of providing money and goods worth 4.18 million won (US$3,220) to the former FTC official in exchange for deleting some contents from documents submitted by Kumho Asiana to the fair trade watchdog between 2014 and 2018.
The former FTC official, identified only by his surname Song, was sentenced to imprisonment of 1 1/2 years and a fine of 10 million won. He was also ordered to forfeit 4.18 million won but avoided an immediate detention, as the court acknowledged that he had cooperated in the investigation into the bribery case and made confessions.
The court said, “Stern punishment (of the defendants) is inevitable because the method of the crimes was very bad and (the crimes) hindered the proper exercise of criminal justice.”
The FTC documents deleted by Song were reportedly related to the investigations into former Kumho Asiana Group Chairman Park Sam-koo, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison last August for embezzlement of company funds, breach of trust and fair trade law violations.
Source: Yonhap News Agency