The former chair has been acquitted of the allegations of defrauding the company of $70 million during the purchase of Bithumb.
The 34th Division of the Criminal Agreement of the Seoul Central District Court rendered a not-guilty verdict on January 3 against Lee Jung-hoon, the former chair of the South Korean bitcoin exchange Bithumb.
Due to fraud, Jung-Hoon was accused of breaking the Act on the Aggravated Punishment Of Specific Economic Crimes.
Since October 2018, when the former chairman is accused of defrauding Kim Byung-gun, the chairman of the cosmetic surgery business BK Group, of 100 billion won ($70 million), the lawsuit has been ongoing.
If proven guilty, Jung-hoon could have received an eight-year sentence. In its formal response to the judgment, Bithumb reportedly stated that it respected the court’s ruling.
The exchange also made it clear that the former chairman is not involved in the current operations and that it is under “professional managers.”
On Dec. 30, almost a week before the decision, Park Mo, the CEO with the largest shareholding in Bithumb, was discovered dead after being accused of theft and stock price manipulation.
These changes occurred in response to a ruling rendered by Singaporean courts in August 2022, which found Byung-gun guilty of selling BXA tokens without Jung-hoon’s permission.
He was required by the judge to give the Singapore-based organization BTHMB all of the money he received from the sale of BXA.
Later that month of October 2022, during the upheaval in the Terra environment, Jung-hoon excused his absence from a legislative hearing by claiming to have a mental illness.
Following the bankruptcy of Terra Luna, South Korean authorities searched a number of businesses, including Bithumb.
After the collapse, South Korean exchanges established an emergency procedure as a safeguard against a similar Terra-like occurrence. All regional exchanges must now list tokens in accordance with the same rules in order to guarantee adherence to national laws.
