South Korean prosecutors sought a five-year prison sentence and a 500 million KRW fine, equivalent to $375,000, for Samsung Electronics Chief Jay Y. Lee at an appeals court on Monday. The appeals case comes 10 months after Lee and 13 former Samsung executives were originally acquitted of manipulating stock prices and committing accounting fraud in connection with the merger of Samsung subsidiaries in 2015, a merger that increased his control over the tech giant. The hearing is significant for two reasons. First, it comes amid a tough period for Samsung, the leading maker of memory chips, as the company navigates slowing profits. Second, it's a signal of how the country is slowly working to reform how corporates are structured, which will have a lot of ramifications not just for the global consumer electronics based out of the country, but also competition in Korea's technology ecosystem more widely, including its startups. The prosecutors said on Monday: 'The defendant damaged the...
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