Samsung Everland Trial

The following article appears in Sisa Journal
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On July 20, the appeal court didn’t make any judgment on Her Tae-hak and Park No-bin and ordered the prosecution to further prove their criminal acts.

The court said “we were thinking to make a judgment, but we considered we might reach just a cursory conclusion since some part of the basic statement in the written arraignment is not clear enough.”

Unlike the first trial, the judges in the appeal court showed different atmosphere by saying: we can make a different decision regardless of the decision made in the first trial; we consider there was a jump in the logic in the first trial; we are not interested in whether the (Samsung) group acted in collusion and we want (the prosecution) to just find out exactly what the two suspects did.

The prosecution gets frustrated. It should prove that Her Tae-hak and Park No-bin actually colluded with shareholders of Samsung Everland, but it is hard to do so. One person at the prosecutor’s office said “who would say they acted in collusion? The prosecution thought even circumstantial evidence would be enough to point to the fact that the two suspects knew that Lee Jae-yong would take over the stake, but the court seemed to see it differently. For the prosecution, there isn’t much new to prove in front of the judges.”

For its part, Samsung also wanted to get a judgment at the appeal court. It seems that the company thought it would be preferable for the court to close the case even if the two were convicted of guilty. One Samsung employee gets frustrated and said “I don’t know what is in the mind of the judges.”

The thing that gets most attention is whether Lee Kun-hee will be summoned. There are three prospects: the prosecution will summon him. There are leads suggesting Lee is deeply involved in the scandal and the prosecution will face severe criticism from the public if not investigate him. The likely course of action would be to summon him and indict him without detention; he won’t be summoned since Lee’s lawyers told everything instead and there isn’t much new to come out from his mouth; He will be summoned but probed in a third place such as a hotel, not at the prosecutor’s office.