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The Central District Court of Seoul is alleged to have ruled that the owner and former president of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange – Lee Jung-hoon – did not commit fraud against Kim Byung-gun for 112 billion won (87.5 million dollars).
If convicted, he could have faced up to eight years in prison.
The Court’s Final Word
According to a local coverage, the 34th Division of the Criminal Agreement of the Seoul Central District Court found Lee not guilty of the accusations of violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment Of Specific Economic Crimes (committing fraud).
The authorities have ruled that he did not misappropriate more than 87 million dollars from the president of the bk group – kim byung-gun – during the negotiations concerning the resumption of bithumb in 2018. In the words of Justice Kang Gyu-Tae:
We cannot accept that the proceeds of trading on the stock market have been transferred because of an error caused by fraud, like the charges against him, on the basis of the prosecutor's evidence alone."
Bithumb, one of South Korea's leading cryptocurrency exchanges, said it respects the outcome of the court proceedings.
"bithumb is run under a professional management system, and the former president lee jeong-hoon is not at all involved in managing bithumb," the company added.
Prosecutors previously insisted that Kim paid the sum as an upfront “contract fee” to acquire the Korean trading venue, while Lee assured that Bithumb would list BXA tokens and use the capital from the assets’ sale in the deal. The coin, however, was not issued through the platform, but through the blockchain trading alliance, and the deal collapsed.
The Death of Park Mo
The court ruling comes less than a week after Park Mo was found dead near his home in Seoul. The South Korean served as Vice President of Vidente, the largest shareholder of Bithumb Holdings Co.
Initial investigation disclosed that Park’s death resulted from suicide. However, some doubted this version since it was the subject of an investigation for having stolen funds from companies linked to the bithumb and manipulated the stock prices.
Moreover, the platform had a close relationship with the giant downed ftx crypto. While the latter displayed intentions to purchase it during the summer, the liquidity crisis and the eventual filing for bankruptcy protection foiled such plans.
