South Korea Prosecutors Seek Arrest of Samsung Chief Jay Y Lee For Bribery (cnbc.com) 38
South Korea's special prosecutors' office said it will seek a warrant to arrest the head of Samsung Group, the country's biggest conglomerate, accusing him of paying multi-million dollar bribes to a friend of President Park Geun-hye. From a report: Samsung Group chief Jay Y. Lee was questioned for 22 straight hours last week as investigators probed a corruption scandal that resulted in parliament impeaching Park last month. The special prosecutors' office accused Lee of paying bribes totaling 43 billion won ($36.42 million) to Choi Soon-sil, a friend of the president who is at the center of scandal. Lee, who became the de facto head of the Samsung Group after his father, Lee Kun-hee, suffered a heart attack in 2014, was also accused of embezzlement and perjury in the prosecution's application for an arrest warrant.
And not the first (Score:2)
And not the first, or last. The absolute amount of bullshit that's gone on in S.Korea in the last decade should be a warning to people of just how bad things can get. The entire case that triggered this has pretty much everything from bribery to handing off classified information, cronyism at levels that would make the most corrupt politician drool and add in a dose of literally following a cult and implementing those ideas on an unwilling population? Oh yeah, this isn't even close to being over yet. Ha
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After the Korean War, South Korea was a poor agrarian country, barely able to feed itself, in fact the standard of living was higher in North Korea.
The Chaebols dealt with (and probably created) whatever Government was in power, there were years of brutal Military dictatorships [wikipedia.org] with South Korea only being a democracy since about 1987.
The Chaebols are so powerful within Sou
Re:And not the first (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it's a great testament to South Korean democracy and rule of law that the head of the company who controls practically a fifth of South Korea's GDP and the head of state can be brought to justice.
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That's one nice thing... on the other hand... would be nice if the United Nations Human Rights Committee could get those 700+ Jehovah's Witness boys out of prison for declining their army invitations. S Korean govt won't budge.
Still many basic human rights violations going on over there.
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Well you can bet that if Norway was in a perpetual state of war with Russia like S.Korea is with N.Korea they wouldn't allow exceptions either. There's a reason why they don't allow people to opt out for conscription like that there. I get the point you're trying to make, but things are fundamentally different when the nearest country is the one you've been at war with for 50+ years.
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Don't fool yourself. In SK there is no difference between the Chaebol and government.
This is a purely political move. One political party is pulling a move on another.
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Thought provoking comment.
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Haven't these people learned? (Score:3, Insightful)
Samsung should have just hired him to give some speeches, nothing illegal about that!
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Fine with corruption? Hardly. Samsung has a long history of engaging in bribing government officials and getting caught. I talked about some of this [slashdot.org] a few months back when news came out that federal agents had raided Samsung Group to collect evidence of these crimes that they're now charging them with. To say the least, their corruption spans multiple generations and is wide-ranging enough to include everything from "mild" issues of business ethics like nepotism to more serious issues of government corrupti
Yes but Apple their chief competitor (Score:2)
CEO of Apple screwed his business partner Wozniak out of hundreds of dollars by lying about his Atari chip bonus. That's pretty corrupt too, no?
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Jobs was a high functioning sociopath. Woz was a goose that laid golden eggs. The thing is people like Woz can sometimes end up doing better under someone who exploits them than on their own, as long as the exploitation is sufficiently impersonal.
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Jobs was a high functioning sociopath. Woz was a goose that laid golden eggs. The thing is people like Woz can sometimes end up doing better under someone who exploits them than on their own, as long as the exploitation is sufficiently impersonal.
Yes, but Woz said he never quite trusted Jobs after that...
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Maybe that's why he stopped laying golden eggs?
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Maybe that's why he stopped laying golden eggs?
Like a lot of "creative types", he kinda got bored with the increasingly-corporate-attitude of the Apple management at the time (keep in mind that this is the same management that drove Jobs away, too), and puttered-off to pursue other endeavors.
He is still on the board of many tech-oriented companies, usually as a creative-consultant kind of guy.
Plus, I get the feeling that he kinda likes being on "permanent vacation"...
WTF are you expecting? (Score:1)
Is everyone on Slashdot this racist? This is my first time here and I was hoping I landed on a good community, but it seems I was wrong...
This is the internet, its not like people are using their real names and addresses; when there is no accountability...
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Drag the sliders to the "1" position (Score:2)
First thing I do when reading any comments is to drag the little sliders over to the "1" position. It helps substantially. Also best to never reply to any AC posts because others may also be filtering them out.
Good Old US of A (Score:2)
It's a shame that the same thing happens every day in the good old USA, except it's legal campaign contributions and lobbying. So there's no longer any chance of a scandal or prosecution. Just business as usual.
2010 book by Kim Young-Cheol (Score:2)
There's a book titled (roughly) "Think Samsung" that was published in 2010 (link [goodreads.com]). It's said to give a disturbing picture of Samsung's corruption, and was even reviewed [nytimes.com] in The New York Times. It was written by Samsung's former chief legal counsel.
In his book, Mr. Kim depicts Mr. Lee and “vassal” executives at Samsung as bribing thieves who “lord over” the country, its government and media. He portrays prosecutors as opportunists who are ruthless to those they regard as “dead” powers, like a former president, but subservient to and afraid of Samsung, which he calls the “power that never dies.”
No phones in jail (Score:2)