Hee-jin Ahn, Gounee Yang

Global Economic News

EMPLOYEES of South Korea’s beauty and cosmetics giant Amorepacific embezzled billions of corporate money and invested the fund in stocks and cryptocurrencies.

Industry sources said that Amorepacific has recently launched an internal audit and disciplined three sales employees for embezzling corporate fund by stealing payments after supplying products to customers.

The three were reportedly invested over using embezzled corporate money to speculate in stocks and virtual coins.

The amount of embezzled money reportedly reaches 3 billion won (US$2.35 million) but Amorepacific did not reveal the detailed amount and just said it has recovered most of the embezzled fund.

Amorepacific said the embezzled amount was less than 5% of the firm’s capital, so it was not obliged to make a regulatory filing and the firm did not report the case to the police. The Korea Exchange suspends stock trading and reassesses the listing qualifications of a company when embezzlement exceeds the 5% threshold.

It was the latest embezzlement case at a major South Korean company since December last year when Osstem Implant filed a criminal complaint against one of its employees for allegedly embezzling 221.5 billion won, the largest amount ever embezzled from a listed South Korean company.