Jailed Billionaire Lee Dong-Chae’s EcoPro, Maker Of EV Battery Materials, Charges Ahead

This story is part of Forbes’ coverage of Korea’s Richest 2024. See the full list here.

Last May, Lee Dong-chae, the billionaire founder and former chairman of chemicals group EcoPro, was sentenced to a two-year prison term and fined 2.2 billion won ($1.7 million) for insider trading.

But that didn’t stop his Kosdaq-listed company from becoming one of the world’s best-performing stocks in 2023, thanks largely to its subsidiary EcoPro BM, South Korea’s largest producer of cathodes for electric-car batteries.

As investors sought to cash in on the EV boom, EcoPro’s shares skyrocketed more than 1,000% in the first eight months of the year—barring a temporary dip after Lee’s arrest—but fell from that peak to end 2023 with an almost sixfold gain. Shares of EcoPro’s battery materials subsidiary EcoPro Materials are up 110% since its listing in November.

Lee, who stepped down as chairman in 2022 and appealed the court ruling, rises two spots to No. 16 with a net worth of $2.2 billion, up $500 million from last year.