A Seoul court issued an arrest warrant for SK Group’s vice chairman on Thursday on charges of embezzling a massive amount of group funds, possibly in collusion with his elder brother.

The Seoul Central District Court issued the warrant to arrest Chey Jae-won, 48, on charges of misappropriating about 100 billion won ($87 million) from SK affiliates to make up for futures investment losses incurred by his elder brother and group chairman Chey Tae-won.

Eighteen affiliates of SK Group, whose key business interests range from telecommunications to oil refining, made a joint investment worth 280 billion won in venture capital company Benex Investment, headed by former SK Group executive Kim Jun-hong, from 2007 to this July.

Of that total, some 99.2 billion won was diverted via Kim Jun-hong’s bank accounts to former SK Shipping employee Kim Won-hong, now hiding in China, who manages a market investment fund for the two owners, the prosecutors said.

Prosecutors have said they will soon decide whether to officially bring an embezzlement charge against the chairman of the country’s third-largest industrial conglomerate. 

(Yonhap News)