이 기사는 2021년 10월 20일 08:08 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

Lawyers representing individuals from Deloitte Anjin and the investor consortium, who were indicted by South Korean prosecutors earlier this year for allegedly mispricing shares of Kyobo Life Insurance, refuted a key witness in the fourth trial on Friday, leading him to recant some of his earlier testimony.

Lawyers for the defendants submitted additional email evidence and continued to cross-examine Park Jin-ho, Kyobo’s vice president, in the fourth trial over the dispute between Shin Chang-jae, Kyobo’s chairman, and its financial investors.

At issue in the case is whether the investor consortium, led by Affinity Equity Partners, played a leading role in creating Deloitte Anjin’s valuation report on Kyobo shares, as the insurance company argues.

Park previously contended that Deloitte Anjin did not perform the valuation in an objective manner, but just carried out calculations according to the investors’ directions, citing emails exchanged between the investor consortium and the accounting firm as evidence.

However, during his cross-examination by lawyers for the defendants in the latest trial, Park agreed that the investor consortium did not instruct Deloitte Anjin on either the date on which the valuation was based or which valuation method to use, the key issues in the second and third trials of the case.

Lawyers for the defendants also set forth standard contracts used by the four biggest accounting firms to refute Park’s earlier claim that a scope of losses covered by the indemnification agreement between Deloitte Anjin and the investor consortium was exceptionally broad. This made him recant his earlier statements.

In 2012 the investor consortium, which includes Affinity Equity Partners, IMM Private Equity, Baring Private Equity Asia and Singapore’s GIC, purchased a combined 24% of the insurance company for approximately 1.2 trillion won ($1 billion), with put options enabling them to sell their stakes to Shin if it failed to go public by 2015.

Kyobo remained as a private company beyond the deadline, prompting the investors to exercise the put options in October 2018 to sell their shares at 409,000 won per share, or nearly 2 trillion won in total, based on a valuation performed by Deloitte Anjin.

Shin refused to fulfill the agreement and Kyobo reported the accounting firm and the investors for allegedly conspiring to misprice shares subject to the put options. Prosecutors indicted three accountants from Deloitte Anjin and two officials from Affinity Equity and IMM PE in January this year. The fifth trial is scheduled for October 29. (Reporting by Ha-na Suh)