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South Korean Court Dismisses Arrest Warrant For Samsung Chief (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A South Korean court on Thursday dismissed an arrest warrant against the head of Samsung Group, the country's largest conglomerate, amid a graft scandal that has led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. But the reprieve for Jay Y. Lee, 48, may only be temporary, as the special prosecutor's office said it would pursue the case. Lee, who has led Samsung since his father, Lee Kun-hee, suffered a heart attack in 2014, was still likely to face the same charges of bribery, embezzlement and perjury, legal analysts said, even if he is not detained. The special prosecutor's office said it would be continuing its probe but had not decided whether to make another arrest warrant request, and the setback would not change its plans to investigate other conglomerates. Spokesman Lee Kyu-chul said the prosecution was unconvinced by the Samsung chief's argument that he was a victim of coercion due to pressure from Park. The office has accused Lee of paying multi-million dollar bribes to Park's confidant, Choi Soon-sil, the woman at the heart of the scandal, to win support from the National Pension Service for a controversial 2015 merger of two Samsung Group affiliates. The merger helped cement Lee's control over the smartphones-to-biopharmaceuticals business empire.
I wonder how much that cost Samsung shareholders? Bribing at that level is not cheap.
We're talking about a country that has this kind of corruption built into its culture. I'm not even being hyperbolic about this - check out some of their traditional children's storeys and half of them are about one character tricking another. Samsung is a company which has grown almost entirely off of ripoffs, copyright and patent infringement - from copying patented Sharp LCD panel technology (which sharp apparently spent over a billion to develop and Samsung just straight up stole it) to the whole iPhone copy thing and many, many more. It's no secret that any patent or copyright case from a company outside of Korea made in a Korea court gets thrown out almost automatically.
What needs to change in Korea is much more fundamental than their government or corporate leaders - it's their culture.