美国国家公共电台 NPR Arrest Warrant Sought For Samsung Heir In S. Korean Presidential Bribery Scandal

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: 

Dramatic developments this morning in South Korea for one of the world's biggest companies. Prosecutors¹ have asked a court to issue an arrest warrant for the leader of Samsung. It's all in connection to this ongoing² corruption³ scandal that led to record-sized protests and the recent impeachment⁴ of South Korea's president. NPR's Seoul correspondent Elise Hu has been covering this for us, and she joins us now on the line. Good morning, Elise.

ELISE HU, BYLINE⁵: Good morning.

MARTIN: How is Samsung involved in all of this?

HU: Well, investigators⁶ say the head of Samsung, Jay Y. Lee, tried to curry⁷ favor with the president with payoffs. Specifically, Lee's accused of directing some $36 million U.S. in company money to two nonprofit foundations that were started by President Park Geun-hye's close friend. This was, prosecutors allege⁸, in order to win government support of a controversial merger⁹ between two Samsung affiliates¹⁰, which happened in 2015. This merger was approved, and it was actually thanks in part to support from the government's pension fund, which is a substantial shareholder¹¹. To put this into context, Rachel, if the arrest warrant does lead to an indictment¹², Samsung becomes the latest to take a criminal hit in South Korea's largest political scandal, really, ever.

MARTIN: OK, so what is Samsung saying about all this?

HU: This comes at a rocky time for the conglomerate¹³. Samsung is set to release the findings on its fire-prone Galaxy¹⁴ Note 7 phone sometime in the next month or so. But on these specific charges, Samsung Korea says it is innocent. A spokesperson told NPR it's hard to understand the prosecutor's decision and that it won't accept the claims that there was any illegal solicitation¹⁵ going on regarding that 2015 merger.

MARTIN: In South Korea, just give us a sense of how big of a deal it is to charge an executive at this level from a company of this size.

HU: Good question. South Korea actually has a history of charging executives at its family-controlled conglomerates¹⁶ like Samsung. These companies are known in Korean as chaebol. Lee's father, the ailing¹⁷ Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee, has actually been convicted twice before, once on bribery¹⁸ charges, another on tax evasion¹⁹. But he never did jail time, and he avoided it partly because of the coziness between Korean government and business. Lee's prison terms were suspended, and his criminal records were actually erased²⁰ by presidential pardons.

MARTIN: All right. So all this is connected to this presidential-level scandal. Remind us where we're at with that. Lawmakers impeached²¹ President Park in December for abusing power. But she's not been removed from office, so where are things at?

HU: Her powers have been suspended. We have an acting²² president that's running South Korea right now. And that's all while this impeachment trial continues, and an independent criminal investigation²³ of the president is ongoing.

MARTIN: NPR's Elise Hu speaking to us about Samsung and the political intrigue²⁴ from Seoul, South Korea. Thanks, Elise.

HU: You bet.