A business division head at Daesang Group suspected of fixing prices for starch and sweeteners was arrested. The chief executive officers of Daesang and Sajo CPK, for whom arrest warrants were also sought, avoided detention.
On the 31st, Kim Jin-man, a warrant-judge presiding judge at the Seoul Central District Court, issued an arrest warrant for a person surnamed Kim, the Daesang Deputy Minister, who is suspected of violating the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act. Director General Kim determined that the division head posed a risk of destroying evidence and fleeing.
By contrast, the court rejected the arrest warrants for a person surnamed Lim, the Daesang CEO, and a person surnamed Lee, the Sajo CPK CEO, who face the same charges. Director General Kim found that there was insufficient substantiation that CEO Lim participated in the collusion, and judged it difficult to see a risk that CEO Lee would destroy evidence or flee.
They are suspected of prearranging prices for starch sweeteners or corn byproducts and agreeing on prices during bidding by major end users. Prosecutors suspect that Daesang and Sajo CPK led the price-fixing.
Prosecutors also detected indications that Daesang, Samyang Corporation, Sajo CPK, CJ CheilJedang, and other oligopolistic starch-sweetener companies engaged in collusion worth more than 10 trillion won over the past eight years and launched a direct investigation. The scale is larger than the roughly 5 trillion won flour price-fixing and 3 trillion won sugar price-fixing cases previously investigated by prosecutors. On the 23rd of last month, they raided the four companies and exercised the right to request accusations to the Korea Fair Trade Commission twice.
Prosecutors have recently focused on investigating price-fixing cases involving essential goods directly tied to people's daily lives. Through last month, they referred 52 executives and employees from companies that took part in collusion worth about 10 trillion won in the flour, sugar, and electricity sectors for trial.