Prosecutors again sought a three-year prison term for Hana Financial Group Chairman Ham Young-joo, who was indicted on charges of helping manipulate the scores of specific applicants in Hana Bank's open recruitment at the request of acquaintances.
The Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office made the request on the 1st at the final hearing of Ham's retrial on obstruction of business charges, held before the 2-3rd Criminal Division of the Seoul Western District Court under presiding judge Lim Ki-hwan. The demand matches the sentence prosecutors sought in the first and second trials.
In his closing statement, Ham said there were cases in which he passed along the fact that someone had applied to the head of the human resources department, because he thought it was a matter of courtesy when a person mentioned the hiring of their child or an acquaintance. "But I never imagined the head of human resources would pass those applicants by breaking the standards," he said.
"There was no reason for me to order that applicants be hired when they did not meet the standards," he stressed.
Ham was indicted in June 2018 on charges of intervening in document screening, group overnight assessment interviews and executive interviews to manipulate the scores of specific applicants at the request of acquaintances during the 2015 and 2016 recruitment of new employees.
The first-trial court acquitted him, finding that he had not exerted influence to get applicants outside the passing range hired.
The appeals court, however, found that Ham had conspired with the head of human resources to make a specific applicant a successful candidate, knowing the applicant was outside the passing range. It overturned the lower court's ruling on the obstruction of business charge and sentenced him to six months in prison, suspended for two years.
The first division of the Supreme Court, with Justice Seo Kyung-hwan as the lead judge, then sent the case back, saying the acquittal in the first trial had been reversed into a conviction on appeal without any reasonable change in circumstances, and indicating the obstruction of business charge should result in an acquittal.
At the same time, the top court upheld the appeals court's conviction and 3 million won fine on a charge of violating the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, over allegations that Ham instructed the human resources department to set a 4-to-1 male-to-female ratio and hire more men ahead of the 2015 and 2016 recruitment rounds.
The verdict in Ham's retrial is scheduled for the 26th of next month.
