Former and incumbent employees of Samsung Securities, which had the first ever dividend accident by selling "ghost stocks" in April last year, received a suspended sentence for the first trial.
On April 10, the Seoul Southern District Court sentenced a 37-year-old former section manager Koo of Samsung Securities and a 35-year-old Choi, to three years in prison, suspended for one year and six months. Lee and Ji, who were handed over to the trial with Koo, were sentenced to one year in prison and suspended for two years.
The court said, "The incident was a case where the damage was large and the impact of stock trading was great, and it violated morality and ethics as a financier who should be thorough in managing other people's assets and managing money."
On April 6 last year, they tried to secure illegal profit by selling it when it was entered into an account with 1,000 shares per share instead of 1,000 won per share due to a mistake in the computer input of the employee in charge.
At that time, they sold 5.01 million shares worth 182 billion won, and some employees were found to have attempted to sell them even after the orders were blocked. Considering the closing price (39,800 won) of Samsung Securities shares at the time, ghost shares worth about 112 trillion won were released to the market.
The Financial Supervisory Service has filed a complaint against 21 employees who actually sold or placed orders to sell ghost shares, and the prosecution has found that Koo and three others sold shares worth 20.5 billion won to 51.1 billion won in installments.
