Samsung Reports Earnings and Gets Raided Too
There's some funny business goin' down in South Korea. The Samsung Group division of the mega-conglomerate was raided today by prosecutors and investigators looking for evidence that Samsung set up a "slush fund" for the sole purpose of bribing political higher-ups. A day before, police set up separate raids on eight other locations in Seoul.
But the main bad guy in this case was one Lee Kun-hee, former chairman. Lee was convicted of bribing the former president of South Korea and given a two-year suspended jail sentence, which actually means squat - he didn't serve any prison time.
The entire operation took place thanks to a tip from one of the top legal guys at the company, named Kim Yong-Chul. According to Kim, some of Lee's family members used slush fund money to buy, among other things, expensive art.
Samsung also reported its earnings for the fourth quarter today (while the raid was occuring, of course): profits of 2.212 trillion won, or 6.6% lower than last year. This was mainly due to declining prices for memory chips, the bulk of Samsung's products, although it was a little offset by sales of LCDs.
The (hopefully) more interesting part of the earnings report was the wireless division: Samsung sold over 200 million cell phones in the past year, well ahead of former #2 Motorola. In all, the conglomerate made 580 billion won ($618.9 million US dollars) from its telecom business (which is not all mobile phone related).
Samsung Group Headquarters Raided - Forbes
Tags: samsung
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