[La Deok-yeon Gate] Daesung Venture Capital Invested in La Deok-yeon Affiliate 8 Years Ago... "Unrelated to Stock Manipulation Scandal"

Kim Young-hoon, Chairman of Daesung Group, Sold Seoul City Gas Shares Last Year
Daesung Venture Capital Invested 2 Billion KRW in Smilegate Investment and Yap Company in 2015
"At the Time, Location-Based Technology Competitiveness Drew VC Industry Attention"

Daesung Group-affiliated venture capital (VC) Daesung Startup Investment (Daesung Changtu) is facing ongoing controversy over its past investment in ‘YAP Company.’ This is due to its investment history in an affiliate of CEO Ra Deok-yeon Hoan, who is accused of stock price manipulation in the Soci?t? G?n?rale (SG) Securities-driven stock price crash incident.

Daesung Changtu made an investment in YAP Company, an online-to-offline (O2O) commerce platform, in July 2015. At that time, it contributed funds through the co-GP fund ‘Research and Development Special Zone Job Creation Investment Fund,’ formed together with Smilegate Investment. They purchased 333,334 shares of YAP Company for 2.04 billion KRW. The price per share was 6,000 KRW.

YAP Company, established in June 2013, is an artificial intelligence (AI) company. According to its business report, YAP Company is commercializing services such as ordering, attendance management, social safety nets, and advertising services based on location technology, and is also pursuing overseas expansion using its international network. From 2019 to 2021, YAP Company was in a state of complete capital erosion.

CEO Ra purchased convertible bonds (CB) worth 24 billion KRW and secured management rights of YAP Global, a former affiliate of YAP Company, in September last year. There is a possibility that CEO Ra acquired YAP Global with the intent to use it as a channel for money laundering. At the same time, CEO Ra may have tried to leverage YAP Global to establish relations with Kim Young-hoon, chairman of Daesung Group (the largest shareholder of Daesung Holdings).

Regarding this, former YAP Company CEO Ahn Kyung-hoon stated, “We are currently trying to normalize YAP Company,” and explained, “Chairman Kim of Daesung Holdings only briefly met at an investor briefing with more than 20 people about 7 to 8 years ago.”

The industry view is that Daesung Changtu’s investment appears unrelated to this incident. A venture capital investment analyst said, “At that time, YAP Company had competitive location-based technology, attracting attention from the VC industry,” and added, “Investments must pass the Investment Review Committee (IRC), which is not an easy process, and various risks are checked along with the company’s growth potential.”

Meanwhile, Daesung Holdings sold 120,000 shares of Seoul Gas (worth 53.8 billion KRW) on March 2, recording a profit equivalent to 5 to 6 times the company’s net income in a single transaction. Daesung Holdings is one of the ‘8 entities hitting the lower limit’ in the SG Securities-driven stock price crash incident. It is suspected of collusion with Ra Deok-yeon’s group due to sales made just before the stock price crash.

※This SG Securities-driven stock price crash incident has sounded an alarm for the capital market order. Readers’ reports will be a great help in uncovering the truth. We welcome any reports regarding investment damage cases, suspicions of stock price manipulation and asset concealment by Ra Deok-yeon’s side, insider details about large-scale sales by major shareholders of Dow Data and Seoul Gas, or any other related information (jebo1@asiae.co.kr). Asia Economy will do its best to establish a transparent capital market order.

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