Ex-Samsung boss avoids prison

The Seoul Central District Court convicted Lee for failing to pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes, and imposed a hefty fine of 110 billion won ($109 million) against the man who led the country's most powerful business conglomerate before he resigned in April over the allegations that included a range of fiscal crimes.

Still, the court said putting the 66-year-old Lee behind bars would be too harsh because he did not actively seek to evade the taxes.

"The extent of his crime is not serious enough to sentence him to prison," Judge Min Byung-hun said. He sentenced Lee to three years in prison and then suspended the sentence for five years, meaning Lee will not go to jail as long as he avoids further legal woes.

After the verdict, a relieved-appearing Lee said: "I'm sorry for causing trouble to the people."

Lee, one of the richest men in South Korea, is the latest in a series of South Korean tycoons whose lawyers deftly used their clients' "contributions" to the country's economic development to help them avoid jail despite guilty verdicts.

Last year, Hyundai Motor Co. Chairman Chung Mong-koo was sentenced to three years in prison for embezzlement, but a higher court suspended the sentence, saying he was too important for the nation's economy to go to jail.

The chairman of another big conglomerate who assaulted bar workers allegedly involved in a fight with his son--Kim Seung-youn from Hanwha Group--received 1 1/2 years in prison last year, but also saw that sentence suspended on appeal.

South Korean judges' penchant for such leniency toward heads of big conglomerates, known as chaebol, has often been dubbed in local media as the phenomenon of "rich means not guilty."

"The judiciary ... officially confirmed today that families of South Korea's chaebol chiefs are immune to the law," the Solidarity for Economic Reform, a Seoul-based civic group, said in a statement. "The court declared on its own that it is no longer an organization that is seeking judicial justice."