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Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong makes a public apology for the controversy surrounding his management succession at Samsung’s Seoul headquarters on May 6. (photo pool)

When Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong delivered an apology to the South Korean public on May 6, one of his goals was to persuade the court to ease his sentence in its retrial of a bribery case linked to former president Park Geun-hye. That can be inferred from the fact that Lee made the apology on the recommendation of Samsung’s legal compliance oversight committee — the judge trying Lee said he would take into account that committee’s effectiveness when deciding Lee’s sentence. But the leading view among legal experts is that Lee’s public apology will have a limited impact on his trial.

Prior to Lee’s apology, the legal community had been watching to see how exactly he would take responsibility for the illegal behavior that occurred while he was inheriting control of the Samsung group from his father. But he didn’t acknowledge responsibility for past illegal actions in his apology. Such an empty apology isn’t likely to have much effect on the course of his trial, experts say.

Lee’s remarks about the succession of management rights were focused on the future. He did bring up a previous trial connected with Samsung Everland and Samsung SDS and his ongoing bribery trial, which is linked to Park’s influence-peddling scandal. But instead of speaking of his own responsibility, he skipped forward to the future by promising to make sure “there’s no more controversy about the issue of management succession.” Meanwhile, he dodged the question of how the criminal charges in his ongoing trial will be resolved.

Others take a more positive view of his apology. “The takeaway here is that Lee Jae-yong’s apology is based on the assumption that illegal activity occurred in connection with the succession,” said one attorney who is well-informed about investigations into Korea’s chaebols, as family-run corporate conglomerates like Samsung are known.

In Lee’s retrial, he faces charges of bribery in the influence-peddling scandal, and he’s also an official suspect in a case of accounting fraud by Samsung Biologics and in the merger of Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries. In each of these cases, Lee is suspected of violating the law as part of inheriting management rights at Samsung. In his apology, Lee promised not to “break the law” or “do anything dubious or unethical” in connection with the issue of succession. These phrases, the attorney said, imply that such dubious and illegal actions occurred in the past.

Lee walks out after making his public apology on May 6. (photo pool)

But doubt remains about the sincerity of Lee’s apology because he omitted any details or responsibility for the illegal actions surrounding the succession of management rights and because he failed to mention the alleged accounting fraud at Samsung Biologics and the accusations surrounding the merger of Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, both of which are currently under investigation.

For the last seven or eight years, at least, Lee has been the ultimate decision maker at the Samsung group. Therefore, he ought to have disclosed whether he was personally briefed about the illegal actions that occurred in those affairs. If not, Lee should have explained exactly whether group executives arranged those actions on their own initiative and declared who bore the responsibility and how they would be disciplined. But Lee didn’t make any mention of such matters.

Since Lee’s apology consisted of little but vague remorse for the past, it’s likely to only have a limited effect on his retrial and the prosecutors’ investigation. The bribery retrial is currently on hold as the special prosecutor waits for the outcome of its request for the presiding judge to be recused. Furthermore, the emptiness of Lee’s apology is likely to raise more questions about the efficacy of Samsung’s legal compliance oversight committee.

Investigators in charge of economic crimes (led by Lee Bok-hyeon) at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office are currently considering when to summon Lee for questioning in connection with accounting fraud at Samsung Biologics and the merger of Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, since Lee had the most to gain from those affairs.

For his part, Special Prosecutor Park Young-soo plans to do everything he can to make sure Lee is held strictly responsible for his bribery. That’s why Park is concentrating on the recusal of Hon. Jeong Jun-yeong, the judge in charge of the retrial who set the stage for Lee’s apology by recommending the establishment of the legal compliance oversight committee.

By Lim Jae-woo and Jang Ye-ji, staff reporters

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