It is a rare moment of public reckoning for South Korea’s most powerful business leaders, courtesy of the country’s biggest political scandal in years.
Usually cloistered executives from Samsung, Hyundai Motor and six other companies faced grilling yesterday, as lawmakers looked into their links to prosecution claims that South Korean President Park Geun-hye allowed a corrupt confidante to pull government strings and extort companies.
It is unusual for tycoons — such as Samsung Electronics vice chairman Lee Jae-yong, Hyundai Motor chair Chung Mong-koo and SK Group chair Chey Tae-won — to face public questioning.
Major TV channels broadcast live the hearing that was expected to go on all day.
Park’s scandal has increased doubts over deep ties between politicians and the country’s top family-controlled firms, known as chaebol. The South Korean president faces allegations she played a role when big business groups donated funds to nonprofit foundations under the control of Park’s confidante, Choi Soon-sil.
Prosecutors are reportedly looking into whether some of the 53 businesses that donated funds received any favors in return.
Many protesters who have filled Seoul streets calling for Park’s arrest have also vented anger toward the chaebol and their founding families, shouting that they are accomplices in the scandal.
During the questioning, Lee and other chaebol bosses denied that they donated the funds to the foundations in order to receive any favors from the government.
Lee faced most of the questions from both ruling and opposition party lawmakers, as the group donated the biggest amount of money to the nonprofit foundations, and also because it was the only group that sponsored the Choi family outside the foundations.
Lawmakers tried to get Lee’s answers on who at Samsung made decisions to sponsor the Choi family, but Lee was evasive.
Lawmakers also grilled the 48-year-old heir regarding his one-on-one meetings with Park, its business deal with the Choi family-owned company and a contentious merger of two Samsung companies last year.
Lee admitted that the way Samsung sponsored Choi’s daughter was not appropriate and that he regrets it.
However, most of the time, he answered that he was not aware of it or could not recall details.
When asked about how he first knew the secretive confidante of the president, the Samsung leader said he could not remember.
“I heard many times [about Choi] recently and I learned how [Samsung] supported as I confirmed the facts, but I’m really sorry ... that I don’t know when I first learned [about Choi],” he said.
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