Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong has been questioned at the prosecutor’s office in Seoul as a suspect in South Korea’s biggest political corruption scandal.<\/p>\n
The firm is accused of giving donations to several non-profit foundations operated by Choi Soon-sil, a confidante of President Park Geun-hye.<\/p>\n
The donations were allegedly made in exchange for political support of a controversial merger.
\nThe scandal has led to President Park being impeached last December.<\/p>\n
“I deeply apologize to the people for failing to show a positive image because of this incident,” Mr Lee told reporters upon arriving on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week two other Samsung executives were interviewed by the special prosecutors, but were treated as witnesses rather than suspects.<\/p>\n
The claims against the company circle around a merger between the electronics giant’s construction arm, Samsung C&T, and an affiliate firm, Cheil Industries.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors allege that Samsung gave \u20ac2.8m euros ($3.1m; \u00a32.5m) to a company co-owned by Ms Choi and her daughter, in return for Ms Park’s support for the deal.<\/p>\n
Lee Jae-yong, also known as Jay Y. Lee, has already given evidence to politicians over the scandal, but this is the first time he has been quizzed as a suspect by investigators. On his way into the investigator’s office, Jay Y. Lee said he was sorry for portraying a bad image. In the past, President Park said she was sorry – for being too trusting.<\/p>\n And her mentor, Choi Soon-sil, also apologized, saying she had “committed an unpardonable crime”. What crime that was though remains unclear – since she also said she was innocent!<\/p>\n Incidentally, Mr Lee has a record of apologies. Four years ago, he took his son out of a school after it was revealed that the boy had a space there meant for the underprivileged (which the son of the acting-head of Samsung clearly is not – in the land where the son always rises, the lad may well end up as the head of the company himself).<\/p>\n There will be more apologies before the current saga is over.<\/p>\n At the parliamentary hearing in December, Samsung admitted giving a total of 20.4bn won (\u00a316m; $17.46m) to the two foundations, but denied seeking favours.<\/p>\n And Mr Lee also confirmed the firm gave a horse and money to help the equestrian career of Ms Choi’s daughter, Chung Yoo-ra, something he said he now regretted.<\/p>\n Mr Lee is currently vice-chairman of Samsung Electronics. But since his father, Lee Kun-hee, suffered a heart attack in 2014, he is considered de facto boss of the entire Samsung Group conglomerate.<\/p>\n Politicians voted on 9 December to impeach President Park over the scandal – a decision South Korea’s constitutional court has six months to uphold or overturn.<\/p>\n Until then she remains formally president but stripped of her powers, which are handed to the prime minister, a presidential appointee.<\/p>\n Ms Choi is on trial for charges including corruption and coercion.<\/p>\n Ms Park’s position began to unravel in October last year when details of her friendship with Ms Choi began to emerge.<\/p>\n They included revelations that the president had allowed her old friend – who holds no government role – to edit political speeches.<\/p>\n Since then, hundreds of thousands of protestors have gathered every weekend in Seoul to demand Ms Park stands down.<\/p>\n Ms Park denies wrongdoing but has apologised for the way she managed her relationship with Ms Choi, who also denies committing criminal offences.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong has been questioned at the prosecutor’s office in Seoul as a suspect in South Korea’s biggest political corruption scandal. The firm is accused of giving donations to several non-profit foundations operated by Choi Soon-sil, a confidante of President Park Geun-hye. The donations were allegedly made in exchange for political support of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[205,2874],"class_list":["post-284058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-samsung","tag-south-korea-corruption"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnalysis<\/strong>
\nConnoisseurs of the apology will study this case for years to come. There has now been a string of important people saying they are deeply sorry, even as they profess their innocence of wrong-doing.<\/p>\n