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| Orion Group Vice Chairwoman Lee Hwa-kyung, left, and Chairman Dam Chul-gon. |
Chairman Dam Chul-gon, Lee's husband, had earlier been acquitted after also being charged with embezzlement in addition to tax evasion. Dam married Lee, the daughter of the late Tongyang Group founder Lee Yang-gu, in 1980.
The vice chairwoman, who managed the company-owned artwork, moved some pieces to her house, according to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office.
Lee allegedly order an Orion subsidiary executive to move "Triple tier Flat-surfaced Table" by Maria Pergay to her house from the company's training institute in Yangpyeong, Gyeonggi Province, in February 2014.
She displayed imitations in the company-owned building instead of the authentic masterpiece worth 250 million won.
In May 2015, the businesswoman was also alleged to have taken "Untitled" by Jean Dubuffet to her house from her office at the group's headquarters at Yongsan, Seoul.
Orion borrowed the artwork appraised at 174 million won from Showbox, one of its subsidiaries.
The prosecutors initially began to investigate the case this March when civic groups accused Chairman Dam of appropriating the two pieces.
Prior to the recent case, the chairman had been sentenced to three years in jail suspended for five years in 2013 for purchasing other high-priced artwork with the company's money in 2011.
However, the prosecutors said they could not prove the charges this time.
Civic groups criticized the prosecutors for switching the charges to his wife, naming her the main culprit.
"The vice chairman is expected to avoid heavy punishment. She has already avoided detention," the Vampire Capital Hunter said in a statement. "Dam would have faced heavier punishment, as he committed the crime during the prison term suspension period."
Admitting the vice chairwoman's misconduct and the company's poor management of its artwork, Orion promised stricter supervision in the future. The food firm, however, denied the civic group's claims.
The chairman was accused of having illegally given shares in Orion subsidiaries to his son.
Also, Tongyang Group Vice Chairwoman Lee Hye-kyung accused Dam of embezzlement in February.
The older sister of Hwa-kyung claimed that her brother-in-law unilaterally sold stocks of a wrapping paper company, which were inherited by the heirs of the late Tongyang founder. The Orion Group spun off from Tongyang Group in 2001.
Meanwhile, Orion has also suffered from China's economic retaliation over a U.S. anti-missile defense system. The company has partly halted operations of its factories in China, due to increasing inventory after a Chinese consumer boycott of Korean products.
After Seoul decided to deploy the U.S. missile shield here last year, Beijing came up with a series of retaliatory measures, claiming the system could also monitor airborne objects in China. The anti-missile battery is being installed to counter threats from Pyongyang.
