On September 6, the Seoul District Court revealed that the CEO who attempted to blackmail Big Hit was sentenced to a year in prison, the CEO was a contractor who threatened the company with disclosing information to the public about alleged commercialization of the agency.
Big Hit is known to have contracted this company to carry out a marketing project two years ago.
This company asked the agency for money by threatening not to disclose the information they had about them.
In the e-mail that the CEO sent to a Big Hit employee, he says, "I've hacked and gotten all your illegal marketing documents for your artists. If you do not ship 330 million won (approximately $ 291,000), the documents will be sent to the media and distributed through messaging services. "
The judge residing in the case said: "This is a serious crime of 'A' [the CEO; only identified in the article by an initial], who took advantage of a client's secret. "
Big Hit Entertainment issued a statement on the subject saying that the illegal marketing documents alluded to by the CEO are completely unilateral statements.
The agency stated, "Big Hit has nothing to hide, so as soon as we became aware of the situation, we submitted a report to the police and actively cooperated with the investigations." Initial reports indicated that Big Hit met the demands of the blackmailer and sent him a total of 57 million won (about $ 50,200) in eight different transfers. Big Hit explained that the agency never sent money to the CEO: "The money that was transferred to the CEO was the inevitable result of a personal attempt on the part of Big Hit employee in charge to whom the threats were initially directed to protect the image of our artists. The agency itself never gave money to the blackmailer. "
They continued their statement: "If Big Hit's reputation ends up being damaged by these claims and reports, despite our immediate handling of the situation by filing a report and cooperating with the police, then there will be no entertainment agency in the future that can take appropriate measures in the face of blackmail. "
In conclusion, the agency apologized saying: "We apologize to BTS and ARMY for alarmed them because of this problem. We will do everything we can and we will carefully handle our business partners and contractors to prevent this from happening again. "
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