[Anchor] ‘Coupang CEO Kyu-tae and the management of TMON and Wemakeprice, who have been pointed as the responsible parties for the ‘large-scale unsettled accounts issue’, have all managed to avoid detention.
The court rejected the arrest warrants for reasons such as “there is room to dispute the criminal charges,” which is expected to impact the prosecution’s investigation.
This is reporter Hong Seok-jun.
[Reporter] The Seoul Central District Court made a decision late at night that there was no need to arrest Kyu-tae, the CEO of Coupang, after reviewing the warrants. The court explained, “It is difficult to determine that there is a risk of fleeing or destroying evidence, as there is a need to ensure the right to defense because there is room to dispute the criminal charges.”
Kyu-tae is facing charges of embezzling around 670 billion won from TMON and Wemakeprice, including 1.5 trillion won in unsettled payments, misappropriation of funds amounting to 69 billion won from TMON and Wemakeprice, and acquisition of funds from the US e-commerce company ‘Wish’. Kyu-tae denied all charges, including suspicions of falsely reporting the unsettled amount to the Financial Supervisory Service.
[Kyu-tae/Coupang CEO]: “(Were you aware of the unsettled accounts issue two years ago?) No, I wasn’t. (When did you become aware of it?) I became aware of it after the incident occurred.”
TMON CEO Ryu Kwang-jin and Wemakeprice CEO Ryu Hwa-hyun, who face similar charges, also managed to avoid detention. The court viewed that there is room for dispute regarding the establishment of criminality for both CEOs.
[Ryu Hwa-hyun/Wemakeprice CEO]: “I knew that there was a slight delay in the settlement of gift certificates in this case. Even though I wanted to reduce the gift certificates, I couldn’t, so I expressed it as ‘a swamp of gift certificates, a swamp of debt.'”
The prosecution, which failed to secure new evidence against the management of TMON and Wemakeprice, is expected to review the reasons for rejection and consider the remaining direction of the investigation.
On the other hand, the court identified the claims against TMON and Wemakeprice in terms of the amount and number of creditors, with claims totaling around 1.2 trillion won and approximately 48,000 creditors as of the commencement date of the rehabilitation process last month. The court explained that creditors who find their claims missing from the list submitted by the two companies should report it by the 24th.
This is Hong Seok-jun from Yonhap NewsTV.
Video coverage journalist: Lee Jae-ho
#TMON #Coupang #rejected
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