South Korea Ordered By International Tribunal to Pay $216 Million to U.S. Investment Firm Lone Star
It is amazing that after all these year the Lone Star issue is still coming up in Korea:
An international tribunal ordered South Korea to pay the U.S. private equity firm Lone Star Funds US$216.5 million plus interest, officials said Wednesday, bringing an end to a decadelong legal battle surrounding its sell-off of a local bank.
South Korea said it cannot accept the decision and will actively consider pursuing an appeal.
The Washington, D.C.-based International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) delivered the verdict in the investor-state dispute settlement suit that Lone Star filed in 2012 to demand US$4.68 billion in compensation from South Korea’s government, according to the justice ministry.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but basically Lone Star made a bunch of much money in Korea and then tried to take its profits outside the country. Their sale of the Korea Exchange Bank led to large protests which caused the government to try and stop the sale any way it can. This all happened back in 2007 and was just one of a handful of anti-U.S. issues activists were using to stoke anti-American sentiment in Korea at the time.
A very oversimplified ‘explanation’ if I might want to add. lol.
The truth is, basically one of the Wall Street big-shot investment companies responsible for the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, got caught carrying out insider trading and manipulated stocks in Korea. They had bought out a major Korean bank for pennies to the dollar after the 1997 IMF bailout of Korea using various methods to devalue the Korean bank. One of the major groups that invested in the Lone Star, was the IMF bank itself. Together, the group through illegal tradings made off with fabulous profit using the IMF influence – taking advantage of the fact that South Korea was in economic turmoil at that time. The ruthless Wall Street that wrecked America and the world in 2008, isn’t going to be a good force for Korea either. The fact that Lone Star was demanding $6 billion in damages from Korea, and they only got awarded $250 million, despite the judges presiding over this case being the IMF (Lone Star’s former major investor), tells volumes as to the validity of this case. Even the IMF has some conscious, as they could not reward that much money to themselves.
Come on, GI Korea, they are just rich financial crooks that have no guilt about ripping off their own countrymen, even if they are Americans.