A Korean man convicted of accepting massive bribes from a South Korean auto parts manufacturer to secure GM bribery contracts has lost his appeal.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the original guilty verdict on the 5th against Hyeongnam Soh, a former General Motors manager also known by his English name Brian Soh. Soh was previously convicted in November 2023 and sentenced in August 2024 to two years in prison, three years of probation, and a $250,000 fine.
Court records indicate that Soh was indicted for conspiring to accept $5 million in bribes in 2015 while working for GM in Detroit, Michigan, in exchange for securing a supply contract for South Korean auto parts maker Ukyung MIT.
At the time, Ukyung MIT CEO Lee Hwan-deok illegally wired massive amounts of funds from South Korea to the United States to secure the contract. This process involved the so-called ‘hwan-chigi’ method, which bypasses formal financial institutions.
In December of that same year, Soh recommended Ukyung MIT to GM executives as a supplier, and Ukyung MIT subsequently won supply contracts for paint, film, and moldings used in GM trucks.
The core issue in this appeal was whether the statute of limitations had expired.
Soh’s defense argued that since the final criminal act occurred on December 21, 2015, the five-year statute of limitations had already expired by December 2020. Therefore, they maintained that the prosecution’s indictment in March 2022 was invalid.
Conversely, the prosecution countered that the indictment was timely because they obtained a tolling order temporarily pausing the statute of limitations from the court while requesting evidence verification from South Korean investigative authorities.
The appeals court sided with the prosecution. The court ruled that even though Soh’s bribery conspiracy charges were not explicitly detailed in the 2020 statute of limitations tolling order, they were included in the actual scope and content of the investigation.
The court cited the fact that South Korean authorities continued procedures to secure documents necessary for verifying the authenticity of certain evidence until July 2021. Because the evidence provision procedures by the Korean side had not been officially completed, the court determined that the tolling of the statute of limitations remained valid.
Soh’s defense also argued that whether the statute of limitations applied should have been decided by a jury rather than a judge, but the appeals court rejected this claim. The appellate court stated that procedural issues unrelated to the direct elements of a crime fall within the domain that a judge can independently determine.
Meanwhile, South Korean investigative authorities previously arrested Ukyung MIT CEO Lee in 2017. After admitting to the charges, Lee actively cooperated with U.S. investigative authorities. That same year, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) seized $3.19 million in bribe funds from Soh’s personal safe in Los Altos, Northern California, which was subsequently returned to South Korea.
