Welcome to the Republic of Samsung
Politics of profit in
action
There are three things South Koreans cannot avoid: death, taxes and Samsung. The Samsung Group, the country’s largest conglomerate, runs hospitals where Koreans are born, apartments for raising families, funeral halls for deaths and just about everything else in between…
But according to a former top Samsung legal executive, it is a corrupt place where the company kept a slush fund of nearly $220 million to bribe public officials so they would not pry too deeply into its management practices. This week, prosecutors widened a probe into Samsung by banning more of its executives from traveling overseas and raiding affiliates to look for incriminating documents.
Samsung has vehemently denied the allegations and issued a detailed rebuttal of the claims made by the former executive Kim Yong-cheol, who left the company in 2004 and waited three years before blowing the whistle on corruption…
The investigation comes just ahead of the country’s December 19 presidential election, where corruption has been a heated issue, and could spill over into the April election for parliament.
Gee. I guess we’re fortunate we haven’t any corporations - or politicians - who favor a corrupt state.
Posted: Tue - December 11, 2007 at 06:30 AM