Samsung heir convicted, sentenced to 5 years on corruption charges

Enlarge / Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong, right, is escorted by a prison officer as he leaves the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea, on Friday. Lee was convicted of bribery and sentenced to five years in prison, a blow to the heir apparent of the world's biggest maker of smartphones and memory chips. (credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Lee Jae-yong, the head of the Samsung Group empire, was convicted in a South Korean court Friday on corruption allegations. He was sentenced to five years in prison in connection to a bribery scandal that took down the nation's president, Park Geun-hye. Among other things, Lee was found to have paid Park bribes in exchange for favors.

The 49-year-old Lee, who is the heir to one of the world's largest companies, was also found guilty of perjury, embezzlement, and of hiding assets outside of South Korea following a six-month trial. The development comes two days after Samsung unveiled its latest flagship mobile phone, the Note8.

The court concluded that the billionaire Lee and four other Samsung executives paid $6.4 million in bribes to win governmental approval for the $8 billion merger of two Samsung affiliates in 2015-a complicated deal that included Samsung Electronics, the globe's biggest mobile phone and chipmaker. Samsung's empire is responsible for about 20 percent of South Korea's gross domestic product.

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