On July 29, both companies applied for the corporate rehabilitation process with the Seoul Bankruptcy Court, citing an inability to recover their financial situation due to a large-scale refund crisis and the loss of business partners.
The court accepted the application and will appoint an administrator to take charge of the companies. The companies will draft a rehabilitation plan to be reviewed by the court.
Tmon and WeMakePrice have experienced a financial crisis due to their failure to settle payments with merchants since early July.
Koo Young-bae, CEO of their Singapore-based parent company, Qoo10, is under suspicion for allegedly diverting funds from these companies to support corporate acquisitions and efforts to list the logistics unit Qxpress on Nasdaq.
The government earlier announced that about 48,000 vendors have not received payments from Tmon and WeMakePrice are affected, with the total damage amounting to 1.3 trillion won ($967 million).