SK's Chey called in for questioning
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SK Telecom is down almost 4 percent on Friday
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SEOUL, South Korea -- Chey Tae-won, the chairman of SK Corp., was summoned by prosecutors on Friday over an investigation into possible illegal stock transactions, a spokesman for the prosecution said.
Chey, 42, is the son of the late former SK Group chairman Chey Jong-hyon, who died in 1998. SK is South Korea's fourth largest conglomerate, behind the Samsung, Hyundai and LG groups.
A key part of the SK Group is SK Telecom, the country's leading mobile phone operator. Its shares are 3.8 percent lower Friday at 165,000 won, compared with a fall of about 1 percent for the benchmark Kospi index.
"Prosecutors summoned Chairman Chey Tae-won to probe several inside stock dealings," Jung Hoon, a spokesman for the Supreme Public Prosecutors' Office, told Reuters by telephone.
Chey was expected to be questioned over allegations that one unit of SK Group had bought his stake in a Seoul hotel for more than the market price, Kim Jung-gi, an SK Corp spokesman, said on Friday.
'Proper procedures'
"The transactions were made according to proper legal procedures after stock prices were calculated by an accounting firm," the spokesman said.
SK Group is also being investigated over allegations that it did not disclose a promise to repurchase shares in affiliate SK Securities held by U.S. investment bank JP Morgan.
On Tuesday, prosecutors banned Chey and 16 other SK Group executives from leaving the country because of the investigation.
Reuters contributed to this report.
