Seoul (AFP)

Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong, who is also de facto the boss, will not appeal his two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for corruption, his lawyer announced on Monday, which could allow his early release.

Mr. Lee Jae-yong, who is officially the vice president of Samsung Electronics, the world's largest maker of smartphones and memory chips, was found guilty of bribery and embezzlement in the massive scandal that precipitated impeachment in 2017 and the incarceration of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

After a long legal process that Samsung has dragged along like a ball, and therefore after a new trial, the grandson of the founder of the Samsung group was sentenced last week to two and a half years in prison by the district court central seoul

"Vice President Lee will humbly accept the decision and has decided not to appeal," his lawyer Lee In-jae said in a statement.

The choice not to appeal could mean that the tech giant wants to turn the page on this scandal.

Given the time he has already spent behind bars, Mr. Lee could be eligible for parole as early as September.

If Samsung had appealed, said Kim Dae-jong, an economics professor at Sejong University, he would have risked a longer sentence, and any request for parole would have been subject to the Supreme Court's final judgment.

"Samsung is aiming for a presidential pardon for Chuseok," he told AFP in reference to the Harvest Festival in September.

The 52-year-old boss was imprisoned for the first time in 2017. He was released the following year when the court had on appeal cleared most of the offenses and sentenced him to a suspended sentence.

But the Supreme Court then ordered a new trial.

He has served approximately one year in detention and will complete his sentence by July 2022 at the latest, if by then he does not obtain his parole, if his sentence is not commuted or if he is not pardoned. .

Samsung is by far the largest of the "chaebols", those family-owned industrial empires that dominate the world's 12th largest economy.

Its overall turnover represents one fifth of South Korea's GDP and is therefore crucial to the country's economic health.

Some analysts have estimated that Mr. Lee's imprisonment risked creating a vacuum that could affect the decision-making process at the head of the group, especially on major future investments.

The scandal concerns millions of dollars that the group had paid to the confidante of the president, Choi Soon-sil.

Bribes which were according to the accusation intended to facilitate the transfer of power to the head of the conglomerate, while the father of Mr. Lee, Lee Kun-hee, the architect of the global take-off of the group, was bedridden after a heart attack in 2014.

The Supreme Court definitively confirmed in mid-January the sentence of former President Park to 20 years in prison.

© 2021 AFP