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| Shinhan Investment headquarters in Seoul / Yonhap |
By Park Jae-hyuk
Mirae Asset Securities said Wednesday that it filed a lawsuit against Shinhan Investment last week demanding compensation for the 9.1 billion won ($8.1 million) it had to return to investors of Lime Asset Management's fraudulent trade finance fund.
Last August, Mirae Asset Securities accepted the Financial Supervisory Service's (FSS) recommendation to return the entire amount of money that Lime fund investors had paid, along with three other sellers of the troubled fund ― Shinhan Investment, Hana and Woori banks.
Since then, Mirae Asset Securities, Hana and Woori banks have prepared for lawsuits against Shinhan Investment because the company was alleged to have conspired with Lime to conceal problems with the fund, according to an investigation by the FSS. But their lawsuits against Lime have been meaningless because the asset management firm was liquidated last year.
Woori recruited clients to invest 65 billion won in Lime's trade fund, while Hana recruited customers to invest 36.4 billion won. They are also expected to sue Shinhan Investment in the near future.
Shinhan Investment, however, denied the allegations raised by the FSS, hinting at legal confrontations with other Lime fund sellers over their responsibility for selling the fund through negligent practices.
On top of the litigations regarding the Lime fund, Samsung Life Insurance and NH Investment & Securities are also embroiled in a legal dispute, after the former sued the latter late last year over the postponed redemption of derivative-linked securities (DLS) associated with a gold trade fund.
Samsung Life decided to file the lawsuit after NH Investment has been unable to fulfill its promise to redeem the DLS until May this year.
Among the DLS worth 61 billion won issued by NH Investment, those worth 53 billion won were sold by Samsung Life. The insurer returned half of the principal to investors of the product, after the securities firm delayed the redemption.
