Three Executives from Seven Major Steelmakers Arrested for 6 Trillion Won Rebar Price Fixing Conspiracy

4 People Dismissed

Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, Seocho-gu, Seoul. / Photo by Jinhyung Kang aymsdream@

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Daehyun] Regarding the '6 trillion won steel rebar cartel suspicion' involving the seven major steel manufacturers in Korea, the court issued pre-arrest warrants for three executives on the 3rd.

The day before, Seoul Central District Court Judge Kim Sangwoo, in charge of warrants, conducted a pre-arrest detention hearing for seven executives from Hyundai Steel, Dongkuk Steel, Daehan Steel, Korea Steel, YK Steel, Hwanyeong Steel Industry, and Korea Steel. On this day, citing concerns over evidence tampering and flight risk, the judge issued arrest warrants for three individuals including Choi, as requested by the prosecution. The requests for the remaining four, including Shin, were dismissed.

On the 28th of last month, the Fair Trade Division of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office (Chief Prosecutor Lee Jeongseop) announced that it had requested pre-arrest warrants for those who were primarily involved in the cartel under charges of violating the Fair Trade Act.

The seven companies are accused of pre-arranging the winning quantities and bid prices in annual unit price contract bids for steel rebar ordered by the Public Procurement Service from 2012 to 2018. The cartel amount is approximately 6.8442 trillion won, the largest in the history of Public Procurement Service bids.

They are investigated to have colluded on the winning quantities and bid prices for 130 to 150 tons of steel rebar annually ordered regularly by the Public Procurement Service for public institutions, based on past contract volumes. Earlier, the Fair Trade Commission imposed a total fine of 256.5 billion won on them in August and reported seven steel manufacturers' corporations and nine current and former employees to the prosecution.

With some related individuals now in custody, the prosecution is expected to expand the investigation to include the representatives of the seven major steel manufacturers.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.