Heir to South Korea’s largest company just avoided spending time in prison after a court suspended his sentence, according to Bloomberg. Samsung vice chairman Jay Y. Lee was originally supposed to spend five years in prison after being found guilty of bribing public officials, but terms of that have changed. He has spent close to a year in detention and has been released for the next four years on probation.
Lee was previously arrested as part of a corruption scandal that brought down South Korean president Park Geun-Hye, who is still awaiting trial. Due to all the commotion, Lee was found to be using his wealth to influence Park’s judgment on matters relevant to his own business interests, including a merger of two Samsung units.
Prosecutors were initially pushing for a 12-year sentence for Lee to demonstrate that there’s no business above law, but seeing as how lenient the system has been to him, this may not prove that. Instead, it may just prove that if you come from a strong wealthy background, you’ll just get what’s equivalent to a slap on the wrist and have some oversight on you.
