TikTok Reaches $100 Million Alabama Settlement Over Child Safety Claims 
Nidec Shares Plunge on Report of $6.3 Billion Impairment Charge 
RBA Set for September Rate Hike as Inflation Stays High 
South Korea Tax Windfall Could Top 50 Trillion Won on Chip Boom 
Asian Currencies Weaken as Dollar, Oil Prices Rise 
Northern Star Shares Surge After Rejecting Gold Fields Takeover Bid 
China Industrial Profit Growth Slows as Weak Demand Offsets AI Gains 
TSMC Accelerates 2nm Expansion as AI Chip Demand Surges 
RedotPay Completes Audits as Stablecoin Firm Advances U.S. IPO Plans 
Gold Slides Below $4,300 as Oil Surge Fuels Fed Rate Hike Bets 
Bitget Restores Withdrawals After $388 Million Security Breach 
Nvidia China Chip Sales Report Sends Chinese Semiconductor Stocks Lower 
China, US Extend Trade Truce Through January 10 After Trump-Xi Summit 
Pi Network Price Holds $0.087 as Protocol 28 Mainnet Upgrade Nears 
BlackRock’s Rick Rieder Favors Bonds Over Stocks as Treasury Yields Surge 
Strategy Buys 1,665 Bitcoin as BTC Holdings Reach 847,666 
Morgan Stanley Raises TD Synnex Price Target to $359 on Strong AI Demand 
Add as a preferred source on Google
The chaos at SM Entertainment escalates after its co-CEO Lee Sung Soo released a video where he exposes the agency’s founder Lee Soo Man of wrongdoing. He claimed that Soo Man is slowly destroying the company because of his personal greed.
He added that SM Entertainment’s founder also forced aespa girl group to put lyrics about sustainability in their songs but he has been evading taxes all along. Lee Sung Soo alleged that Lee Soo Man is systematically dodging tax payments through a private company that he also established overseas.
"Since last year, Lee Soo-man has been pitching a K-pop festival with the theme idea of planting trees,” the co-CEO said in the video. "He suddenly started rooting for sustainability and ordered aespa, whose concept is so well laid-out and clear, to sing a song with the concept of planting trees. We, the co-CEOs could not stand by the content that no one agreed with and decided to cancel it for aespa's sake."
The video which has since been viewed by thousands of people was uploaded by Lee Sung Soo on his own YouTube channel on Thursday, Feb. 16. As per Korea Joongang Daily, the co-CEO further revealed that Lee Soo Man created CT Planning Limited (CTP) in 2019 and it is based in Hong Kong.
He said this production firm was built with the intention of avoiding taxes. The SME founder was also seeking to expand CTP’s businesses to manage all of the SM artists' music activities outside of South Korea.
The business arrangement in CTP is said to be similar to Soo Man’s other private firm called Like Planning which has been collecting up to six percent of SME’s total annual revenue and labeling this collection as production fees. Through this process, he has been getting KRW 140 billion or about $109 million over the course of 20 years.
One of the most scandalous claims is that Lee Soo Man’s ultimate goal for doing all of these is to acquire real estate overseas and build casinos where marijuana is legal. He will be taking advantage of K-pop’s popularity to launch and get the business going.
Finally, Lee Sung Soo is the nephew of the SME founder’s late wife. He has been CEO since 2020 but joined the entertainment firm fin 2005 as a part of the artist and repertoire (A&R) team.
