Seoul — A Seoul court jailed Lotte Group chairman Shin Dong-bin for bribery, leaving the nation’s largest retail group leaderless as the conglomerate seeks to navigate a planned initial public offering (IPO) of its hotel unit and as China relations threaten the sale of a chain of stores there. Shin, who turns 63 today, was sentenced to 30 months in prison after the Seoul Central District Court found him guilty of charges stemming from Lotte’s decision to give 7-billion won ($6.5m) to a confidante of former president Park Geun-hye, allegedly in exchange for government favours in providing a licence to operate duty-free stores. Prosecutors had sought a four-year jail term. He becomes the second head of a top conglomerate to be imprisoned for seeking to curry favour with impeached president Park by bribing one of her confidantes. The de facto head of technology giant Samsung Electronics was jailed last year in a related trial but he was unexpectedly released last week on appeal, in a r...
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