[Infostock Daily= Reporter Park Hyo-sun] Park Yong-jin, a lawmaker of the Democratic Party of Korea, urged the financial authorities to conduct an all-out investigation into Samsung Securities' illegal activities, including loans to executives of its affiliates, during a parliamentary audit of the National Assembly's National Policy Committee on the 23rd.
"Samsung Securities lent more than 10 billion won to executives of its affiliates for three years from 2015 to 2018," Rep. Park Yong-jin said and pointed out, "The Capital Market Act is not allowed to lend more than 100 million won to executives of its affiliates."
"Samsung Group executives have been using Samsung Securities like a private safe," Park said, adding, "The financial authorities should closely investigate whether it is a deviation of individual executives or the tip of the iceberg organized at the Samsung Group level." This is a view of market disturbance using illegal funds.
"Specifically, three out of five executives at Samsung Bioepis took out about 6 billion won in loans," he said, adding, "The period overlaps and the size of the loan is exceptionally large."
"The financial authorities have detected securities firms' credit exposure violations five times in the past 10 years and representatively imposed 5.7 billion won in fines on KB Securities," he said, calling for the government to deal sternly with the Samsung Securities case, citing that there are cases of disposal of credit exposure violations.
Yoon Seok-heon, director of the Financial Supervisory Service, said, "We are considering a thorough and extensive investigation. We will investigate it as soon as possible."
In addition, based on the prosecution's indictment on Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong's alleged 'illegal succession of management rights', lawmaker Park Yong-jin inquired about various violations, including △the prohibition of the provision of information on affiliates under the Capital Market Act, △the obligation to manage conflicts of interest, △the prohibition of consignment of market price manipulation orders, △the prohibition of false entry of securities reports and △the prohibition of false entry of reference documents against voting rights agents.
"The financial authorities have taken active action on similar cases. They have issued four fines or warnings on issues that have falsely stated the contents of securities reports since 2016 so far and have warned against cases of urging shareholders to delegate voting rights with undisclosed reference documents and a power of attorney," lawmaker Park said, adding, "In some cases, fines were imposed for failing to report the signing of a collateral contract to the financial authorities or failing to report the signing of a stock transfer contract."
"We need to properly investigate and dispose of Samsung Securities at this opportunity to set an important precedent for compliance management in the securities industry," he stressed, adding, "The financial authorities should immediately launch an investigation next week."
In response, both Financial Supervisory Service Chairman Yoon Seok-hun and Financial Services Commission Chairman Eun Sung-soo said in unison, "I agree. I will do my best to establish market order."
When Rep. Park asked, "I asked the Financial Services Commission to obtain and review Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong's indictment, but how is the progress going," Chairman Eun Sung-soo replied, "We are receiving the gist of the indictment from the prosecution and checking the parts that can be inspected at the financial authority level, not the trial."
Reporter Park Hyo-sun hs1351@infostock.co.kr
