Former Chairman Park Hyun-jong (62) of comprehensive dining company bhc has been sent to trial on charges of misappropriating tens of billions of won in company funds and assigning the operation of highly profitable franchise outlets to his family.
According to legal sources on the 10th, the Criminal Division 3 of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office (Chief Prosecutor Choi Jae-man) indicted Park without detention the previous day on charges including breach of trust under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes and occupational embezzlement and breach of trust. Park is accused of causing about 3.9 billion won in losses to the company by closing two bhc company-owned stores in Seoul with high sales and converting them into franchises operated by his family.
Unlike franchises, company-owned stores are run directly by headquarters, so sales go back to headquarters; prosecutors said their investigation found that converting high-sales company-owned stores into franchises caused losses to the company.
Park is also accused of buying luxury goods with company funds as gifts for a particular executive close to him and allowing free residence in an expensive officetel leased by a bhc group affiliate, even though the person did not qualify for housing support under internal rules.
It was also revealed that he illicitly paid performance bonuses totaling tens of billions of won to close staff. The indictment also states that he paid 700 million won in interior expenses for a bhc-owned resort he used exclusively with company funds and misappropriated a corporate card worth about 45 million won.
Investigators also confirmed that he bought a yacht under the name of a company he effectively controlled and pocketed about 190 million won by making it appear as though it was used at bhc-hosted events. After receiving the case from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Anti-Corruption and Public Crime Investigation Unit in March, prosecutors supplemented the investigation, reinforced the charges, and sent him to trial.
Earlier, in 2015, Park was indicted on charges of violating the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection and the Personal Information Protection Act for accessing BBQ's internal network using the IDs and passwords of employees of rival BBQ without their consent, and in February this year he received a finalized sentence of six months in prison, suspended for two years.