Samsung fined W60m by regulator

Samsung Electronics Co. was fined 60 million won yesterday by the Fair Trade Commission on charges of obstructing a government investigation and falsifying pertinent documents.

The electronics conglomerate has been accused of freezing its internal computer network to impede an investigation of its semiconductor subsidiary, System Engineering Mega Solution, launched by the FTC in November last year.

The company also created false documents and deleted data that may prove to be crucial to building up the case, the FTC said.

The FTC said it would impose 20 million won on Samsung Electronics, and another 20 million won each on two senior company officials.

Of the eight cases involving obstruction of government investigations, the FTC said four are related to Samsung Group affiliates.

Prior to the FTC`s probe of SEMES in November last year, Samsung officials and SEMES allegedly held a closed-door meeting to make plans to conceal evidence of illegal subcontracts.

The antitrust regulator claimed that Samsung Electronics and SEMES fabricated the contract to hide the fact that the two forcefully fixed a unit price of products supplied by an unspecified manufacturer.

The two companies later deleted certain parts of the contract to hide the suspect deal, according to the FTC official.

Samsung also reportedly made a set of guidelines in 2000 in cases of the inquiries by the regulator.

The guidelines ordered the destruction of all pertinent data and paper documents, to freeze the internal computer network, in addition to checking employees` personal computers and laptops to delete any critical information.

It also advises that a Samsung employee chaperone the investigator during the search, and to make a report to the head office after each search has been done.

"The obstruction of the search usually involves a fist fight or haphazardly hiding the evidence at the scene as the search is about to be made," said a FTC official.

"But this is a very unique case in that the guilty parties had planned far ahead of the time the actual searches were made. This hindered our investigation extensively," he added.

Due to the sophistication of the fraudulence, the FTC will handle the case heavy-handedly, to prevent similar acts from happening in the future, he emphasized.

(jpark731@heraldm.com)



By Park Jung-youn