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Samsung Billionaire Gets Off Easy (gizmodo.com)
Lee Jae-yong, the Samsung chief found guilty of bribery and embezzlement, was freed from prison after an appeals court reduced and suspended his five-year prison sentence. Gizmodo reports: Lee had pleaded not guilty to all charges and spent nearly a year in jail, CNN reported, before the appeals court reduced his sentence to two and a half years and suspended it for four. The court reportedly found him guilty of one bribery charge, but not of hiding money offshore. It also overturned another bribery charge. It's important to understand that Samsung has a tight grip on the country's economy. Known as a "chaebol," or a (usually family-owned) business conglomerate, Samsung contributes to a little over one-fifth of the country's exports. Its businesses make up about 15 percent of the country's total economy. It is extremely rare for leaders of the country's chaebols to be justly punished for their crimes --
most convicted are ultimately pardoned or granted a commutation. Lee's father, Lee Kun-hee, has been pardoned twice for similar charges.
to be above the law. It's good to be the king.
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Lee's father, Lee Kun-hee, has been pardoned twice for similar charges.
Being an American, I just shrug. We have the same "justice system" here. Poor people go to jail. Rich people don't. It's not right, but it's not news, either.
I don't respond to AC's.
I thought the US had the best Justice System money can buy! Come on, guys!
Rip everyone off.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
s/law/money/
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Known as a "chaebol," or a (usually family-owned) business conglomerate
Sounds like the Japanese zaibatsu. The 'solution' was to replace them with keiretsu, which are essentially the same but with shareholders and a board of directors at top rather than dynastic ownership. The zaibatsu system was very popular back in the day, apparently.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
You're missing something important though. Ask yourself what all of those four rich people have in common and the answer is that their crimes were largely against other rich people. The aristocracy will always overlook the behavior of their peers towards the peasantry, but not the transgressions against their own. But even then the punishments are mild. No one was getting sent to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
Maybe he should have rephrased it to if a poor person and rich person do the same crime, the poor person is 500x more likely to do the time because that is closer to reality than rich people get the same justice as poor. In reality the poor can't commit the large finnancial and environmental disasters that the rich are so rarely if ever held to account.
Four examples doesn't mean the whole thing is nonsense. Its proven time and time again those with powerful lawyers who can drag a case out forever often get off for way less than someone without such means.
Then there's that "affluenza" fuckstick.
How many Wall Streeters and bankers other than Madoff were jailed for their part in the collapse of the world economy in 2008?
I can't think of any. A few CEOs were forced out of their jobs, with severance packages which were probably 500x the average salary of their banks' rank and file employees.
Somehow SK is viewed in the west as being less corrupt and full of bribes than China, but it's not true. I've lived here for nearly a decade, corruption is the name of the game in SK. This is no surprise, there was never going to be real penalties.
They're the spiritual equivalent of a coked out jack russell happily running head first into a brick wall.
Sounds like every conversation I've ever had about a persons devout religious beliefs.
Meanwhile Trump committed many, many instances of fraud against lower class people who fell for the Trump University scam. He wound up paying out over $25 million to settle lawsuits, but he did not go to jail.
Wells Fargo committed millions of acts of fraud against lower class people and nobody went to jail.
The subprime mortgage industry participated millions facts of fraud and nobody went to jail. In fact, the lower class tax payers were forced to bail them out to make sure they didn't even have to go bankrupt.
Funny how that works. Screw over poor people and maybe you pay a fine which is less than what you gained or maybe you get handed a bunch of money to keep you from going bankrupt. Screw over someone wealthy, however, and you go to jail.
I'd still prefer to put a slug through their skull instead of relying on some judgement that may or may not come.
Thinking about it, divine justice for those bastards ain't much different from mundane judgement.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
According to the World Justice Project South Korea has about a equal a 'rule of law' as the USA.
US 18th, South Korea 19th.
UK 10th, France 21st for some context.
Filthy Scandi countries in their normal single digit positions :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
New Zealanders are well balanced with a chip on each shoulder. One represents Australia, the other the rest of the world
If you don't like the fact that this guy was given clemency, then punish the corp. with your purchases. Buy someone else's stuff in stead. Stop relying upon some other government to punish corporate wrongdoing. If their profits drop, they will find out why, and then change their ways, or go under. "But that's not going to work, because people don't care enough about the lawfulness of corporations to actually change their buying decisions!" you say? Well, then it must not matter. So let it go. People are either smart enough to vote for the leaders who have their finger on the nuclear button, or they are not. They are either smart enough to vote with their dollars, or they are not. Make up your mind.
Link leads to a page which doesn't state what you said, but does lead to a link to RT. Horror show, moy droogie.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Exactly! Nice articulated and thought out! And why they went after Madoff, of course!
movies to get a good grasp of their present highly-charged capitalist culture:
Veteran
Protect The Boss
Prosecutor Princess
Super Rookie
The Unjust
Good morning, Boris! How's the weather in Kiev today?
All of them. In Soviet America everyone is guilty. Feed the Gulag!
You're linking to a page that talks about something completely different: unwillingness to divulge financial information of clients. That's pretty much completely unrelated to corruption. A more relevant list (sorry I don't know how to link to it with sorting by government integrity) will show us that Venezuela, Nigeria, Cambodia, Madagascar, and Somalia top the list of most corrupt.
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
Not only in North Korea, in South Korea too, the word 'Justice' has become a very very sick joke
Money talks
No matter who is in charge
No matter who lives inside the Blue House (South Korea's Presidential Palace)
Money talks
The true rulers of South Korea are not the politicians
The true rulers of South Korea are the chaebols
Samsung Group, Hyundai Group, Lotte Group, LG Group, SK Group, and so on ... see the list @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_South_Korea ...
No one dare to oppose the chaebols
See for example, this incident --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_rage_incident
The end result of the above case?
"On May 22, 2015, in Seoul High Court, the daughter of the boss of the Korean Air was found not guilty of changing airline course"
Sounds familiar?
If you're going to go down for bribery make sure you remember to bribe the judges on the appeals court so that you can get your sentence reduced in a timely fashion.
Gery Shalon is a much better example. Of course nearly no one is aware of the lawsuits against one of the biggest hackers ever and the fact that an Israeli newspaper reported he already has a plea deal to walk, because US mainstream media doesn't talk about it.
It really is good to be king.