The chairman of the board of directors of Samsung is accused by the South Korean authorities of hiding accounts with 4.2 billion dollars from the authorities to avoid paying the taxes owed on the money. We are talking here about Lee Kun-hee, he transferred money to more than 1000 accounts that together collected 4.2 billion dollars, and now the South Korean authorities want to tax that amount.
The sums were discovered in 2008 following a special investigation, but curiously, so far no one has bothered to impose any tax on them, but things have changed. The authorities now want to collect tax for the colossal amount collected by Lee Kun-hee in the hidden accounts and we could be talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.
Those accounts would have been used to illegally transfer the wealth of Lee Byung-chull, founder of the Samsung group and father of Lee Kun-hee, and considering the amount, it is understandable why they tried to avoid paying taxes. According to South Korean legislation, a tax of up to 90% is to be imposed by the authorities for at least part of the money in the respective accounts.
"With the ministry's interpretation, it would be a matter of time for the tax agency to impose tax on money withdrawn from more than 1,000 accounts discovered during a special investigation by a special counsel into Chairman Lee Kun-hee in 2008. he money withdrawn from the accounts totaled around 4.5 trillion won ($4.2 billion)."
The current president of Samsung's board of directors allegedly hid his identity illegally in transactions made for those amounts, and this is where the extremely high tax comes from. What percentage of that money will reach the state remains to be seen, because Lee Kun-hee will most likely fight to keep his money, but he is not the first accused of this kind, having been convicted at least once so far.
The scandal comes just a few years after his son, Lee Kun-hee, was sentenced to prison for bribery in the capacity of vice-president of the board of directors of Samsung.
