Daewoo Founder Sentenced to Prison Term
By BO-MI LIM, Associated Press Writer 44 minutes ago

SEOUL, South Korea - A Seoul court on Tuesday sentenced the founder and former chairman of collapsed conglomerate Daewoo to 10 years in prison for a range of charges including embezzlement and accounting fraud.
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The Seoul Central District Court said it also ordered Kim Woo-choong, 69, to forfeit more than 21 trillion won ($22 billion) and pay a fine of 10 million won ($10,600).

Kim was indicted in June last year on charges of multi-trillion won accounting fraud, illegal financing and diverting funds out of the country. He was also accused of embezzlement and breach of trust.

A severe sentence was "unavoidable" since Kim was engaged in activities that contributed to Daewoo Group's bankruptcy and hurt
South Korea's image abroad, the court said in the ruling.

"It is doubtful whether (Kim) is truly repentant as he tries to dodge the responsibility and justify his actions," the ruling said.

It wasn't immediately known whether Kim would appeal the ruling.

He was found guilty of the charges, including over 20 trillion won in accounting fraud, 9.8 trillion won worth of illegal financing, and diverting 19 trillion won out of the country, Judge Nho Yu-kyong said. He was also found to have embezzled $100 million, she said.

Kim started as a textile salesman in 1967, building an empire that came to stand among the largest conglomerates, or "chaebol," in South Korea.

Daewoo collapsed under massive debts in the wake of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, when the South Korean government was forced to accept a $58 billion
International Monetary Fund bailout.

Parts of Daewoo were broken up and sold, with Detroit-based General Motors Corp. acquiring a major stake in Daewoo Motor to create GM Daewoo in 2002.

Kim fled the country in 1999, living mostly in France, until returning to South Korea last June to face charges.

The court ruling was less severe than what prosecutors had sought. Earlier this month, prosecutors requested the court order Kim to serve 15 years in prison and forfeit 23.4 trillion won ($24.8 billion).

 

wow, that's interesting,

 

Can you imagine all of the people this guy screwed over and ruined?

10 years sounds pretty easy to me.

 

I wonder how he thought he could get away with it with a company that large...eventually he he was going to get caught.

 

Shades of Enron?

 

WTH was he thinking?

I misunderstood the title as being sentenced for coming out with such crappy cars

 

They really are not crappy at all....at least the ones sold here. In case you are not aware of this, GS3, Daewoo builds 3 vehicles for Suzuki in the American market......... the Verona ( a redone mid-sized Leganza), the Verona ( a redone compact Nubira sedan ) , and the Reno, ( a rebadged compact Nubira coupe ). All three appear to be pretty nice cars for the money......I have driven the Verona but not the other two.
Daewoo also builds the Chevrolet Aveo sedan and hatchback for Chevrolet / GM. It is essentially a redone Daewoo Lanos subcompact. I have also driven that car....but it is not quite as nice as the Suzukis. It has a lot of engine noise.

 

Yes...I'm sorry...I made an error...I corrected it above.
I had caught it myself and deleted the post but apparantly not before you copied it.

 

Oh, ya, when I posted, the original message was still there. I deleted mine too.

 

Well, he made me a crappy DVD player (Region 4 for Mexico) and it went on the fritz the other night and finally went dead.

 

Greed leads to ruin. I wonder if Hyundai will go down as well with their huge scandal.

 

Let's hope not. Hyundai makes too many value products for too many customers. ( in fact I just got done reviewing the new Entourage ) For the market to lose them would be a disaster....and they would take Kia with them.

 

It seems many of Korea's largest and most visible corporations are suffering from quite a few scandals. It's not very surprising for me, but I'm sure Hyundai will ride through it. Hyundai is pretty diversified with a very strong heavy industries sector like Mitsubishi.

I believe Samsung also just got through some very major scandals as well.

Gossip: I remember hearing the daughter of Samsung's chairman committed suicide sometime late last year?

 

Mexico has been the dumping ground for a number of unsuccessful electronics products. When home video was first put on the market, Sony offered the Betamax, and a few months later Matsu****a (Panasonic, JVC, Technics, Quasar and other products) brought out their VHS tape recorders using a slightly different video head alignment that did not require the wide guard bands of Beta tape, thus could stack more information on a given length of tape.. VHS ultimately became the world standard, while Betamax, an arguably superior system, failed in the marketplace primarily because with only a 2-hour recording time, it couldn’t record a baseball or a football game in its entirety.

But there’s another story – one you didn’t see in the US. Matsu****a introduced VHS decks in Mexico about the same time Sony produced the Betamax. These first VHS machines used a single reel – like an old 8-track tape. The tape was a continuous loop, so it didn’t need to be rewound – just punch the “Record” button and you could record 2 to 4 hours from that point on. The tape was an endless loop that wound on itself, feeding new tape from the inside layer at the hub, through the heads, to be wrapped back on the outside of the reel.

Anyone who remembers the old 8-tracks knows that after a few plays, many cartridges jammed and/or the tape broke. The carts, in order to be built cheaply, couldn’t maintain the tight tolerances required for the feeding mechanism. Same thing happened – only worse with the more critical videotape cartridges. The ½” VHS tape was so poorly packaged that the units failed usually within a week. They were never sold . . . .anywhere but Mexico. Matsu****a, obviously trying to recover some of their investment, dumped the entire production run – at a bargain price south of the border. Meanwhile they developed a standard reel-to-reel cassette only slightly larger than the Betamax, and the rest is history.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. It seems that Mexican consumers, burned by this little scheme turned on Panasonic and JVC. Matsu****a products had earned the reputation of being junk and customers stayed away in droves. It was years before you could give away one of their branded products in Mexico. Sony managed to continue to sell Beta decks down there for years after they had abandoned the US market – and for once, the Mexican consumer came out a winner.