Prosecution Raids Samsung Group Affiliates

The Special Investigation and Inquiry Headquarters, which is investigating the Samsung Group’s alleged slush fund creation and lobbying activities, raided the headquarters of Samsung Securities in Jongno, Seoul, and two data centers on Friday.

This is the first time the special prosecution team has raided Samsung’s affiliates since it launched its investigation in earnest on Monday.

A total of 40 officers, including six prosecutors, raided the president’s office and about ten executive offices on the 12th floor, and the strategy planning team and office suites on the 14th floor of the Samsung Securities headquarters at 7:40 a.m. on Friday. The prosecution finished its search at 3 p.m., confiscating eight large boxes of materials, including transfer slips of security accounts since January 2000, computer hard drives, and other documents related to the alleged slush fund activities.

At around 3:30 p.m. another raid was made by some 20 investigators on Samsung Securities’ computer center in Suseo-dong, Seoul and Samsung SDS’s e-data center in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province.

“We believe that the raids were absolutely necessary in investigating the alleged slush fund scandal. The raids, however, did not target lawyer Kim Yong-cheol’s hidden accounts,” Kim Su-nam, a senior prosecutor of the special task force team, told reporters at a press briefing yesterday.

Another prosecutor involved in the case said, “The raids were necessary to preclude the possibility of the destruction of evidence.”

With regard to the raids, Samsung`s former chief in-house lawyer Kim, who was summoned again by prosecutors in the afternoon, said, “I’m sure that even the wastebaskets of the strategy planning team are all completely emptied by now. I believe prosecutors should adopt a more effective investigation method to track suspicious securities accounts.”

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