Eldest daughter of late LG Group chairman acquitted again in insider trading case

The eldest daughter of the late LG Group Chairman Koo Bon-moo and her husband have been acquitted for the second time on charges of acquiring shares using undisclosed information, with a Seoul appeals court upholding the lower court's not-guilty verdict.

Seoul High Court's Criminal Division 4-3, presided over by judges Jeon Ji-won, Kim In-gyeom and Seong Ji-yong, dismissed the prosecution's appeal Wednesday and upheld the first-trial acquittal of Koo Yeon-kyung, head of the LG Welfare Foundation, and her husband Yoon Kwan, chief executive of Blue Run Ventures (BRV).

The appeals court said it found grounds for suspicion that Koo had purchased shares after receiving investment-related information from her husband, but nonetheless reached the same not-guilty conclusion as the lower court.

The court noted that the shares Koo bought had repeatedly risen and fallen in value, and said the stock did not appear to be one that an investor with almost no experience in share trading would easily buy in expectation of a price increase.

The court added that it could not rule out the possibility that Koo had, as she claimed, obtained information through other channels and invested based on her interest in social value. Even taking all evidence submitted by the prosecution into account, the court said, it fell short of proving beyond reasonable doubt that Koo had purchased the shares after receiving information from her husband.

The couple had been accused of using undisclosed information related to a rights offering by Mezzion, a Kosdaq-listed biotech company, to obtain illicit gains.

Koo was accused of purchasing 35,990 shares of Mezzion worth approximately 650 million won ($484,000) after learning that BRV — where her husband serves as chief investment officer — planned to invest 50 billion won in Mezzion through a third-party allotment rights offering in April 2023.

The first trial had also returned a not-guilty verdict, in February, finding that Koo's trading of Mezzion shares showed no unusual pattern compared with her purchases of other stocks, and that no evidence existed that her husband had passed undisclosed information to her.