Suspicion of “establishing a corporation and stealing from business partners”… Sued for hundreds of millions of won in breach of trust, police say 'not guilty'

“An inevitable choice in the midst of a transaction suspension crisis” VS “Profit was stolen”… The arguments of both sides are conflicting

Former executives of a cosmetics company who were accused of breach of trust worth hundreds of millions of won due to a conflict with a business partner have been ordered not to be sent to the police.

The Yongin West Police Station in Gyeonggi Province announced on the 24th that it had decided not to send two people, including Mr. A, a man in his 50s, on charges of breach of trust and obstruction of business in January with ‘no charges’.

Mr. A and others are accused of embezzling the company's profits by siphoning off existing buyers after working at the company he founded with his partner, Mr. B, for about four years starting in 2019 and establishing a separate corporation. It was also alleged that the company interfered with information processing by deleting thousands of business files stored in the company's cloud.

In response, Mr. A completely denied the charges. As the transaction between the existing company and the buyer was in danger of being completely halted, the position was that the contract was inevitably continued through a new corporation in order to maintain profits. It was claimed that the deleted files were also private videos or duplicate data where the original was stored separately, and there was no intention to intentionally interfere with the company's operations.

The police judged that it was difficult to acknowledge intentional breach of trust based on the complainant's claims alone. The cause of the suspension of existing transactions has not been clearly proven, and the actions of Mr. A and others may be viewed as measures to prevent losses for the company.

Seo Bong-ha, a lawyer at Daeryun Law Firm, who represented Mr. A and others, said, "On the surface, it was a situation that could have caused misunderstanding as the partner had established a separate company and deleted the files, but behind the scenes, there was a legitimate reason to prevent losses to the company." He added, "We were able to successfully defend the plaintiff's unreasonable claims by proving the fact that the original files were preserved in detail and the situation in which the transaction was at risk of being cut off."

Intern reporter Heo Now rightnow@kyeonggi.com

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Suspicion of "establishing a corporation and stealing business partners"... Sued for hundreds of millions of won in breach of trust, police say 'not guilty' (Shortcut)