One of the former heads of Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME), Nam Sang-tae, has been charged with breach of trust and bribery which caused large losses at the shipyard.
The 66-year-old former President and CEO was accused of making some KRW26.3 billion in losses for the shipbuilder through business arrangements with certain acquaintances.
Nam Sang-tae, who held the CEO position at DSME from 2006 to 2012, is currently being held in custody due to previous bribery charges.
Earlier in January, DSME’s former President and CEO Ko Jae-ho, who held the position from 2012 to 2015, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a lower court in Seoul over accounting fraud.
He was found guilty of altering accounts and figures in 2013 and 2014 to inflate assets as well as of obtaining loans by using faked financial statements.
After being allegedly charged with underreporting some KRW 120 billion in business losses in 2015, the company’s current President and CEO Jung Sung-leep, who took the helm of the financially troubled shipbuilder in May 2015, was interrogated by prosecutors in mid-January.
The latest charges were made just days after DSME unveiled plans to increase its self-rescue plan from last year’s KRW 1.6 trillion to KRW 2.5 trillion in 2017.
The new measures would include a further decrease in workforce by up to 2,000 workers and the disposal of DSME’s non-core assets, such as its IT business, buildings and floating docks, with a total worth of around KRW 500 billion.
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