South Korea’s top 30 business conglomerates were fined 2 trillion won ($1.95 billion) for 309 counts of violation of antitrust and financial regulatory rules as well as the country’s laws over the last three years, data by a local corporate research firm showed Wednesday.

According to CEO Score, companies belonging to LG Group, the country’s fourth-largest family-run conglomerate, known here as chaebol, were slapped with 759.8 billion won in fines, accounting for 37.6 percent of the total.

The group was hit hard for price rigging of its cathode ray tube by the European Commission. This case alone accounted for 700 billion won in fines.

Besides LG, four other conglomerates were slapped with fines exceeding 100 billion won.

Hyosung and SK each reported fines of over 300 billion won. KT was ordered to pay 129.8 billion won. Hyundai Motor Group’s 23 affiliates were fined a little over 100 billion won combined.

Samsung Group, South Korea’s largest chaebol, was penalized on 51 counts, with the size of the fines reaching 95.5 billion won, ranking sixth in terms of total amount.

The corporate productivity evaluation firm added that on average a conglomerate was penalized once every 3.5 months for an average amount of 1.9 billion won in the 2011-13 period.

It said that of the fines levied, 35.1 percent was issued by the Fair Trade Commission, followed by 25.3 percent by the Financial Supervisory Service. The country’s court and state prosecutors levied 6.9 percent of the total, with the rest being issued by the Korea Communications Commission. (Yonhap)