{Prosecutor summons Samsung leader Jay Lee over donations made to firm linked to scandal involving president’s friend.}<\/p>\n
A South Korean special prosecutor said it had summoned Samsung Group leader Jay Y. Lee as a suspect in a scandal involving President Park Geun-hye.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors have been checking whether Samsung’s support for a business and foundations backed by Park’s friend, Choi Soon-sil, was connected to a 2015 decision by the National Pension Service to back a controversial merger of two Samsung Group affiliates.<\/p>\n
Samsung, South Korea’s largest bunisess group, has acknowledged making contributions to two foundations as well as a consulting firm linked to Choi.<\/p>\n
The prosecution summoned two senior Samsung Group officials this week for questioning, though they were classified as witnesses.<\/p>\n
At a December parliament hearing, the executive denied that the firm paid bribes to pave the way for the 2015 merger.<\/p>\n
Samsung made the biggest contributions of 20 billion won ($17m) to Choi’s foundations, followed by Hyundai, SK, LG and Lotte.<\/p>\n
In December, investigators also summoned Kim Jae-youl, chief of the sports marketing unit of Samsung Group, as they look into allegations that the business giant sponsored the president’s jailed friend, Choi, to receive government favours.<\/p>\n
Samsung is separately accused of funnelling millions of dollars to Choi to bankroll her daughter’s equestrian training in Germany.<\/p>\n
President Park could become South Korea’s first democratically elected leader to leave office early after parliament voted in December to impeach her over the corruption scandal, a decision that must be approved or overturned by the Constitutional Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Prosecutor summons Samsung leader Jay Lee over donations made to firm linked to scandal involving president’s friend.} A South Korean special prosecutor said it had summoned Samsung Group leader Jay Y. Lee as a suspect in a scandal involving President Park Geun-hye. Prosecutors have been checking whether Samsung’s support for a business and foundations backed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-31733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31733"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=31733"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=31733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}