Prosecutors investigating two beleaguered e-commerce platforms’ cost delays to distributors at the moment are attempting to find out the character of giant sums of cash altering fingers between these companies and their father or mother firm, authorized sources mentioned Sunday.
In accordance with the sources, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Workplace secured a administration consulting settlement between Qoo10 and their e-commerce associates, TMON and WeMakePrice, in June 2023. Underneath the deal, these associates had been required to pay the Singapore-based firm thousands and thousands every year in alternate for administration consultancy provided by Qoo10 CEO Ku Younger-bae, and likewise to cowl labor prices for the finance division and the service middle at Qoo10.
Prosecutors suspect TMON and WeMakePrice despatched about 1 billion gained (US$762,195) to Qoo10 every month for a 12 months, in keeping with the sources.
Qoo10 Expertise, a tech subsidiary of Qoo10, had been receiving 1 % of the associates’ income every month in alternate for dealing with these corporations’ funds, know-how improvement, authorized affairs and human sources administration. The contract seen by the Seoul prosecutors apparently compelled TMON and WeMakePrice to pay much more cash to Qoo10.
Prosecutors are additionally attempting to find out whether or not Qoo10 had taken its associates’ cash supposed for Qoo10 Expertise for providing monetary companies.
The sources mentioned prosecutors just lately questioned TMON CEO Ryu Kwang-jin, WeMakePrice CEO Ryu Hwa-hyun, Qoo10 Expertise CEO Kim Hyo-jong and Qoo10 CFO Lee Si-jun over the matter. They’re being suspected of embezzlement, fraud and different unlawful acts.
Ku is predicted to be referred to as in for questioning as early as Monday. Ku’s house was raided in August as a part of the investigation.
In late July, TMON and WeMakePrice filed for court docket receivership as a result of liquidity issues that led to large delayed funds to distributors on their platforms.
The federal government estimates that overdue funds quantity to 1.28 trillion gained, affecting round 48,000 distributors.
Ryu Kwang-jin and Ryu Hwa-hyun are accused of letting Qoo10 misappropriate 50 billion gained of their corporations’ company funds to finance its takeover of the U.S. e-commerce platform Want.
