Hancom Chairman's Second Son Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison for 9 Billion Won Hidden Funds in Cryptocurrency... Court Imprisonment

The second son of Kim Sang-cheol, chairman of Hancom Group, who was indicted on charges of creating slush funds worth around 9 billion KRW through virtual assets invested by a subsidiary of Hancom Group and using them privately, was sentenced to prison in the first trial.

Suwon District Court (Photo by Yonhap News)

On the 11th, the Criminal Division 1 of Suwon District Court Seongnam Branch (Presiding Judge Heo Yong-gu) sentenced Kim (35), who was indicted for violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes (breach of trust), to three years in prison. Jung (48), CEO of Arowana Tech, a virtual currency management company invested in by a Hancom subsidiary, who was also tried together, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison. They were released on bail in March and tried without detention but were taken into custody in court on this day.

The two are accused of creating slush funds by requesting a domestic virtual asset consultant to sell about 14,571,000 Arowana tokens from December 2021 to June 2022, and after deducting fees, receiving settlement funds worth approximately 8.03 billion KRW in Ethereum and Bitcoin transferred to Kim’s personal electronic wallet. Arowana Token was listed on a domestic virtual asset exchange on April 20, 2021, but was delisted on August 9, 2022.

They are also accused of requesting an overseas virtual asset operator to sell 4 million Arowana tokens in March 2022 and receiving virtual currency worth about 1.57 billion KRW in operating profits transferred to Kim’s personal electronic wallet.

The prosecution identified that the slush funds created by Kim amounted to about 9.6 billion KRW and that Kim used them privately. Previously, the prosecution had sought a nine-year prison sentence for Kim.

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