Man in His 40s Accused of 'Poaching Clients While Switching Jobs'···Police Decide Not to Refer Case

Charged with Occupational Breach of Trust but Cleared Due to Insufficient Evidence

A company employee, A (in his 40s), from Busan, who had been under investigation on suspicion of poaching his former company's clients in the process of moving to a competitor, was cleared of the charges in the police investigation.

According to the Busan Sasang Police Station on the 12th, A, an employee of a mid-sized company who had been accused of occupational breach of trust, recently received a decision not to refer the case (to the prosecution).

A had been in charge of system maintenance at company B for 20 years before resigning in 2025 and moving to a competitor. In this process, A was accused of inducing existing clients to terminate their contracts with company B, and of leaking information acquired in the course of his work, causing company B damage of about 90 million won per year.

However, A completely denied the charges, stating that he had never urged clients to terminate contracts or offered unfair terms before or after his resignation. He argued that the clients had autonomously changed their contracting company, considering factors such as service quality.

The police judged that there was insufficient objective evidence that A had urged the termination of contracts with company B. It was also taken into account that some clients, inconvenienced by service response delays that occurred while company B was replacing a skilled employee, had first requested contracts from A's side.

In addition, the police judged that the client information A used was already known within the industry and thus was difficult to regard as a confidential trade secret, and that after his resignation he was no longer in a position handling company B's affairs, making it difficult to meet the requirements for the establishment of occupational breach of trust.

Attorney Kim Geun-su of Daeryun LLC, who represented A, said, "It is difficult to immediately conclude that a breach of trust occurred merely from the result that clients moved after the job change," adding, "We focused on demonstrating that the clients autonomously chose their contracting party, trusting the individual engineer's practical experience and response capability accumulated over a long period."

Attorney Kim continued, "By presenting together the circumstances of declining service response capability and accumulated client dissatisfaction within the complainant company, along with witness statements, we were able to correct the misunderstanding about the circumstances of the client migration."

Reporter Baek Jae-hyun (itbrian@newsis.com)

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Man in His 40s Accused of 'Poaching Clients While Switching Jobs'···Police Decide Not to Refer Case (Go)