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Three Samsung Electronics executives will go the way of their colleagues over at Hynix and serve hard time in a U.S. jail for their role in a price-fixing scandal. Samsung was the last DRAM maker involved to admit to the charge and pay fines to the U.S. Justice Department.
The department on Wednesday said Lee Sun-woo, Samsung's senior manager of DRAM Sales in 2002, Kang Yeong-ho, the associate director of DRAM marketing in Samsung's U.S. subsidiary and Lee Young-woo, the sales director for Samsung's German subsidiary, pleaded guilty and agreed to pay fines and serve jail terms. They were under investigation for conspiring with other Korean and overseas semiconductor firms to fix the price of DRAM chips they supplied to PC and server manufacturers in the U.S. between April 1999 and June 2002.
The Samsung executives, who now work at company headquarters in Korea, will pay a US$250,000 fine each and serve between seven and eight months in a U.S. prison. The Justice Department investigated some 30 Samsung Electronics executives and staff and is reportedly still investigating four of them. Earlier this month, four Hynix executives agreed to serve five to eight months in jail.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in a statement said ¡°all conspirators, whether domestic or foreign, that harm American consumers through their illegal conduct¡± will be held to account. He said that involves the sentencing of the individuals involved as well as imposing fines on companies.
The Justice Department started its investigation in 2002 and fined four companies more than $700 million. The other two were Elpida of Japan and Infineon of Germany.
Samsung Electronics company regulations say staff sentenced to prison or subject to heavy penalties at home and abroad can be reprimanded. But insiders overwhelmingly say that will not happen since the executives did not act in their own interest.
Samsung semiconductor business head Hwang Chang-gyu said the firm is ¡°considering whether we can provide help within the legal limit¡± to the ill-fated executives. ¡°There isn¡¯t much the company can do in the matter as the department sentenced the individual executives to prison rather than the company,¡± he added.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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