SEOUL, Aug. 24 (Yonhap) — South Korea’s financial regulator reported on Thursday that it had identified extra violations of the law by asset management firms that had been implicated in a huge financial fraud incident.
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said it had conducted extra investigations into Lime Asset Management, Optimus Asset Management and Discovery Asset Management, which had been found to have sold fraudulent funds and caused considerable losses to investors.
Lime is newly suspected of disguising the investment losses of four of its funds by distributing the losses to other funds in 2019. Five companies Lime had invested in are also suspected of misappropriating a combined 200 billion won (US$150.8 million) of corporate funds from 2017 to 2022.
The FSS also believes that an executive at Optimus, whose identity has been withheld, bribed a high-ranking official of an unidentified public institution in exchange for receiving 106 billion won worth of investment in its fund in 2016.
An unidentified executive of a special purpose company (SPC) invested by Optimus has been found to have used 1.2 billion won for personal purposes after taking out 1.5 billion won from Optimus’ fund money, which the SPC had held from 2018 to 2019, according to the FSS.
Other former Optimus executives are also accused of embezzlement and unfair transactions.
The FSS also said Discovery is suspected of falsely raising investment for new funds for repayment of failed funds in 2019, and four of its executives allegedly used undisclosed information to make unfair profits.
The FSS said it has reported the allegations to investigative authorities and will take punitive actions against them.
Lime and Optimus went bankrupt last year after causing trillions of won worth of financial damage to their investors.
This illustrated image depicts the financial fraud scandal involving Lime Asset Management. (Yonhap)
nyway@yna.co.kr
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