The Supreme Court issued a ruling in favor of acquittal on the hiring corruption charges against Ham Young-joo, chairman of Hana Financial Group. With this, Ham shed the legal risk about eight years after his first indictment in 2018 and kept his chairmanship.
On the 29th, the Supreme Court's First Division, presided over by Justice Seo Kyung-hwan, overturned the appellate ruling that found Ham guilty of obstruction of business and remanded the case to the Seoul High Court. Although the trial is not over, the legal risk has ended because the Supreme Court quashed and remanded the case on grounds consistent with acquittal.
Previously, while serving as president of Hana Bank, Ham was indicted on charges that, between September and November 2015 during an open recruitment for new hires, he received personnel solicitation and intervened in the document screening, group training, and executive interviews to give preferential treatment to specific candidates by manipulating the scores of those who should have failed. In the first trial in 2022, he was acquitted, but the following year the appellate court reversed the verdict and sentenced him to six months in prison, suspended for two years.
Under the Act on Corporate Governance of Financial Companies, a person sentenced to imprisonment or heavier cannot serve as an executive at a financial company. If the appellate ruling had been finalized, Ham would have lost his position.
Ham also faced charges of discrimination in hiring (violation of the Act on Gender Equality in Employment) for setting in advance a 4-to-1 ratio of male to female successful candidates for new bank clerks from 2013 to 2016 and taking adverse measures against women without a reasonable cause. The appellate court found him guilty on those charges, and the Supreme Court finalized the ruling. However, because those charges resulted in a fine, they are unrelated to his chairmanship.
Hana Financial said, "With this ruling as a turning point, Hana Financial Group will, under a stable governance structure, serve with greater humility and care to closely look after financially marginalized groups facing hardship, and concentrate all of the group's capabilities on providing productive finance and expanding inclusive finance to support the nation's future growth and stabilize people's livelihoods."