Jo In-cheol, the legal administrator of e-commerce platforms TMON and WeMakePrice, under court-led rehabilitation since September, said Friday he has filed a damage suit against three executives of the two companies and their parent firm, also seeking a freeze of their personal assets.
In the suit filed with the Seoul Bankruptcy Court, the court-appointed custodian has requested 180 billion won ($123 million) in compensation for the two firms' failure to make payments to vendors and customers, and to freeze the executives' personal assets.
"Some 56,000 vendors and 470,000 customers have yet to receive payments worth 1.3 trillion won and 130 billion won, respectively, from the two platforms. Related employees and suppliers have suffered some losses as well," Jo said over the phone.
The three executives are Singapore-based parent Qoo10's Chief Executive Officer Ku Young-bae and the heads of the two Qoo10 subsidiaries -- TMON CEO Ryu Kwang-jin and WeMakePrice CEO Ryu Hwa-hyun.
The financially troubled TMON and WeMakePrice filed for court receivership in July, which resulted in massive delayed payments to vendors using their platforms.
In October, the bankruptcy court approved the process to find a new owner for the companies and selected EY Hanyoung accounting firm as the lead manager for the process.
In December, prosecutors indicted the three executives without detention on fraud, embezzlement and breach of trust charges related to the Qoo10 group's large-scale payment delays.
Ku was accused of conspiring with the TMON and WeMakePrice CEOs to defraud vendors of about 1.85 trillion won and embezzling some 100 billion won in corporate funds. The three were also suspected of inflicting a loss of 72.7 billion won to TMON, WeMakePrice and another affiliate, Interpark Commerce, through unfair intergroup transactions.
Jo said he came up with the figure of 180 billion won after calculating the losses inflicted by the three executives on the two companies based on the court's indictment against the executives.
"If Ku and the two others offer their personal assets, all of them will be spent to help resolve the delayed payments under the court's approval," he said.
Meanwhile, EY Hanyoung has recently selected home-grown grocery delivery platform Oasis Corp. as a preliminary bidder for TMON.
WeMakePrice is separately up for sale.
The sale process will be carried out in the form of a stalking horse bid, in which a preliminary bidder suggests its price for the platforms ahead of a formal auction and other bidders submit their prices in the auction.
If a bidder were to suggest a higher price, the preliminary bidder would have to decide whether to take over the platforms at the other bidder's price or not.
EY Hanyoung will receive proposals from companies interested in TMON by April 9 in the auction, Jo said. (Yonhap)
