South Korea court convicts ex-Reckitt Benckiser unit chief in sterilizer case

[January 06, 2017]  SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean court convicted on Friday a former head of the local unit of the British consumer goods maker Reckitt Benckiser <RB.L> over the sale of humidifier sterilizers linked to deadly lung injuries, sentencing him to seven years in prison, Yonhap news agency said.

The Seoul Central District Court found the former executive, Shin Hyun-woo, guilty of criminal negligence for failing to inspect the safety of the product and allowing its sale, Yonhap reported.

In May last year, the current head of the company's South Korean unit apologized and accepted responsibility. The South Korean government said in 2015 that 92 people were believed to have died from causes related to humidifier sterilizer products, not all of them made by the Reckitt Benckiser unit.

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Stephen Coates)

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