High-profile conflict between two groups takes a nasty turn


Two South Korean conglomerates with close ties ― Samsung Group and CJ Group ― clashed on Thursday over alleged illegal surveillance in connection with the drawn-out inheritance fight tracing back to Samsung’s late founder.

CJ Group filed a formal complaint with the police against an employee of Samsung C&T Corp., a construction and trade unit of the country’s biggest chaebol group Thursday afternoon after putting out a scathing press release.

“We expressed deep regret over the trailing incident, and surveillance should not be tolerated under any circumstances in a free society,” CJ Group said in a statement. “Furthermore, it is hard to understand why Samsung, a top-ranked global firm, has committed this act.”

The conflict came as a shock not least because CJ Group is not a stranger to Samsung Group. The two conglomerates share a corporate history that goes back to Lee Byung-chull, who founded the towering chaebol.

CJ Group demanded a formal apology from Samsung, which denied any wrongdoing and stressed the incident stemmed from a misunderstanding.

CJ Group said a 42-year-old man working for Samsung C&T is suspected of following its chairman Lee Jay-hyun since late last week.

According to CJ Group, closed-circuit television footage showed the man circling the residence of Lee since Monday in different cars, although they say he may have started following the chairman as early as last Friday.

Samsung, however, told a different story. In a telephone interview with The Korea Herald, Samsung C&T spokesperson said the man, whose family name is Kim, works for the company’s auditing team and made a visit to the place in question to check out a land spot that might be used for a development project. “There was a minor traffic accident, but the police concluded the incident as nothing serious, and Kim just came to know about the issue this morning through newspapers and he said he could not understand (this incident),” he said.

A CJ Group official said Samsung’s claim is hard to accept as the fact remains that the man trailed Lee and there was another car suspected to have been used for surveillance.

Samsung Group’s official stance is that it will wait for the investigation by the police.

The two groups are already locked in a legal tussle over wealth inheritance. On Feb. 14, Lee Maeng-hee, the eldest son of the Samsung Group founder, filed an inheritance suit against his younger brother and Samsung Electronics Co. chairman Lee Kun-hee, saying he should share in a large number of stocks he claimed the Samsung head secretly incorporated into his assets. Lee Maeng-hee is the father of CJ chairman Lee Jay-hyun.

CJ Group was separated from Samsung Group in 1994 after Lee Kun-hee took control of the conglomerate.

By Yang Sung-jin (insight@heraldcorp.com)