By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Samsung Heavy Industries is suspected of cooking the books, according to the prosecution team investigating the Samsung Group's alleged slush fund creation.
A prosecutor said Thursday that investigators have found suspicious accounting at the company. They examined the books of five Samsung affiliates for the last eight years, including Samsung Heavy Industries, after receiving their records from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the largest accounting firm that managed Samsung's financial statements.
According to the records, Samsung Heavy Industries built a total of 1.5 million tons of ships by volume in 1998. The construction volume rose to 2.3 million tons in 1999, and has since been gradually increasing each year.
The company's premiums for ships under construction should have kept rising in proportion to the increase in the volume of ships. However, according to the records, the premiums dropped largely between 1999 and 2001 despite the continuous growth in volume, the prosecutor said, indicating there may have been accounting fraud. The premiums went up again afterward.
Samsung's former legal department director Kim Yong-chul, who disclosed the conglomerate's alleged slush fund creation and bribery, said earlier that Samsung Heavy Industries committed accounting fraud worth 2 trillion won around 2000. He said the company fabricated documents to appear that it was building a ship near Geoje Island in South Gyeongsang Province, while actually it was not.
The prosecutor said investigators had not finished examining the records, and that it will hand them over to the independent counsel that will take over the case around Jan. 10.
The special prosecutor Cho Jun-woong and his team of 30 investigators will probe the conglomerate's slush fund creation allegation. Even though Samsung Heavy Industries is confirmed to have cooked its accounting books, the case may remain unsolved if it is not related to the slush fund.