Seoul Central District Court has sentenced Kang Duk-soo, the founder and the former head of South Korea’s shipping and shipbuilding conglomerate STX Group, to six years in prison for a number of corporate crimes, Yonhap reports.
Kang Duk-soo, who headed the group from 2003 to February 2014, was convicted of illegally diverting funds of the group’s faltering shipbuilding unit STX Heavy Industries Co. towards other ailing affiliates, mostly STX Construction Co.
Kang was also found guilty of tampering with the accounts to cover his tracks, as well as embezzling STX funds to invest in his privately owned firm.
“Kang inflicted huge losses on financial institutions through accounting fraud that threatens trust and transparency of the capital market,” Yonhap reports Judge Kim Jong-ho saying in his ruling.
Prosecutors had initially accused the 64-year-old of corporate crimes amounting to USD 2.4 billion, but the court found Kang guilty of accounting fraud valued at USD 547.3 million, and the embezzlement of USD 63.7 million.
World Maritime News Staff