After weeks of controversy, actor Lee Seung Gi formally filed a legal complaint against Hook Entertainment CEO and some of the agency’s previous and current directors, his legal representative announced Thursday, December 22.
According to the actor’s legal rep, they filed the complaint because the agency kept his music profits a secret for around 18 years since his career debut. They also failed to pay him for all his music projects.
Due to these misconducts, Lee Seung Gi and his legal team decided to file a legal case against Hook Entertainment CEO Kwon Jin Young and the agency’s financial directors due to the alleged Act on the Aggravated Punishment etc. of Specific Economic Crimes (occupational embezzlement) and fraud violations.
Also, the actor’s camp discovered through recent findings that the agency’s current and former executives deceived him and deliberately neglect to pay his advertisement model earnings.
“Lee Seung Gi believed that approximately 10 percent was paid to the advertisement agency under the title of ‘agency commission,’ but it appears that in actually, Hook Entertainment’s former and current directors did not pay a part of the agency commission to the ad agency and [instead] shared it amongst themselves,” the legal representative said.
When he raised the issue, the agency only decided to pay the actor around ₩630 million (approximately $500,000).
The legal representative also revealed that while the actor never entered a formal agreement with the agency regarding the unpaid music fees, Hook Entertainment transferred around ₩4.81 billion (approximately $3.8 million) on the morning of December 16 and filed confirmation of non-existence of debt lawsuit against Lee Seung Gi.
The actor-musician has yet to receive the complaint filed by the agency and claimed that there is a significant discrepancy between the transferred amount and the total amount he should receive.
“While simultaneously responding to the lawsuit on the confirmation of non-existence of debt, we will file a counter lawsuit, and we plan on claiming damages against Hook and related personnel for unpaid music fees and illegal acts,” the representative stated.
The total amount recently received by Lee Seung Gi from Hook Entertainment included his unpaid earnings worth ₩2.9 billion ($2.2 million) and ₩1.2 billion ($900,000) worth of delayed interest.
However, the actor turned to Instagram to announce that he will use all the transferred money to donate to charity besides the legal fees.
Source: Naver
