Lee Jae-yong

Lee Jae-yong inherited Samsung, went to prison for bribing a president, and was pardoned because the government decided the economy needed him. He is the grandson of Samsung's founder and the son of Lee Kun-hee, who turned it from a maker of cheap components into the largest manufacturer of memory chips and smartphones in the world. Samsung affiliates account for a share of South Korean exports large enough that the company's health and the country's are difficult to discuss separately. The succession was the problem. Korean inheritance tax on a controlling stake runs to about half its value, and the family's own shareholding was small relative to the group it controlled, so the transfer depended on a merger of two affiliates at a ratio favourable to him and on the national pension fund voting for it. That vote is what the prosecution was about. He was convicted of paying bribes to entities controlled by Choi Soon-sil, a confidante of President Park Geun-hye - including the purchase of a competition horse for Choi's daughter Chung Yoo-ra - in exchange for state support of the merger. He was jailed in 2017, released on a suspended sentence, jailed again in 2021 when the Supreme Court sent the case back, and paroled after seven months. In August 2022 he was pardoned outright, the justice ministry saying in terms that the country needed him to lead the economic recovery. He became executive chairman in 2022. The episode is the standard illustration of the chaebol problem: a conviction that is real, a sentence that is served, and a release argued for on the ground that the convicted man is too important to keep in prison.

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