From The Verge: Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong — known in the West as Jay Y. Lee — has won a presidential pardon by South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, allowing the grandson of Samsung’s founder to resume leadership of the powerful conglomerate, Bloomberg reports. The pardon will be formalized on August 15th.
The presidential pardon is reminiscent of the two given to Lee’s father, Lee Kun-hee, who was convicted of corruption and tax evasion in 1996 and 2008.
“In a bid to overcome the economic crisis by revitalizing the economy, Samsung Electronics vice chairman Lee Jae-yong, whose suspended prison term ended recently, will be reinstated,” the South Korean government said in a statement reported by the Financial Times.
The pardon is the latest turn in a bribery scandal that dates back to 2017, when Lee was accused of bribing then-President Park Geun-hye. The Samsung heir was initially sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of corruption but served less than one year of his sentence before being released on appeal. He was subsequently reimprisoned in January 2021 before being released again in August that year on parole. In total, he served a year and a half of his 30-month sentence.
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