Two former employees of Lee & Ko were arrested and indicted on the 28th on charges of misappropriating undisclosed information ahead of a company's stock public offering.
On that day, the Financial Investigation Division 1 of the Southern Seoul District Prosecutors' Office (Director General Kim Soo-hong) announced the arrest and indictment of A (38) and B (40), former employees of Lee & Ko, on charges of violating the Capital Markets Act and the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection.
According to the prosecution, A and B are suspected of having obtained stock public offering information for Hankook & Company, Austem, and SNK by unauthorized access to the email accounts of lawyers belonging to the corporate advisory team while working in the Lee & Ko IT department from August 2022 to June 2024. They allegedly profited 1.82 billion won and 527 million won respectively from stock trading using this information.
However, the prosecution found no evidence to prove that the lawyer, the owner of the email account, provided confidential important information and dismissed the charges as 'not applicable.'
On that day, the prosecution also indicted, without detention, former MBK Partners employee C (30) and two acquaintances on charges of violating the Capital Markets Act.
C is suspected of having conveyed undisclosed important information related to the stock public offering of Hankook & Company, learned through a company meeting, to two acquaintances, thereby enabling them to obtain illegal profits. It was found that C's acquaintances collectively gained 799 million won using the undisclosed information. At the time, MBK was attempting a stock public offering for Hankook & Company.
Separately, C is also accused of obtaining illegal profits of 99 million won by trading stocks under a borrowed name using undisclosed important information from a company that MBK had invested in.
The prosecution launched an investigation into these individuals following a report from the Financial Services Commission in February. A prosecution official noted, 'We will respond strictly to crimes that exploit information asymmetry to harm investors by utilizing undisclosed information.'
Meanwhile, Lee & Ko stated, 'Immediately after the investigation by the FSS began in July last year, we implemented a large-scale IT consulting program to establish prevention measures and received evaluations for maintaining the highest level of security from professional institutions,' adding, 'We will strengthen in-house compliance training to ensure such unfortunate incidents do not occur in the future.'