Prosecutors cite 39 notebooks of evidence in Samsung graft trial

South Korean prosecutors laid out their case against Samsung Electronics Vice-chairman Jay Y Lee by outlining how a top presidential aide documented instances of alleged bribery in the pages of 39 handwritten notebooks.

That surfaced during Lee’s first court appearance in a trial at the centre of one of South Korea’s largest-ever graft scandals, which cost President Park Geun-hye her job and highlighted the murky nature of government-corporate relationships. The billionaire heir to the Samsung group is fending off accusations of corruption just as its largest corporation is trying to regain ground lost to Apple during 2016’s Note 7 recall debacle.

Wearing a gray suit without a tie, Lee listened calmly as prosecutors took an hour to outline charges against him. Prosecutors said notebooks from An Chong-bum, a former chief secretary for economic affairs and policy coordination, backed claims that the tycoon ordered money funnelled to a friend of Park’s. Those funds, portrayed as donations, were intended to secure government backing for a pivotal 2015 merger that shored up Lee’s control of Samsung Electronics, they said.

“The essence of this case is, simply put, the chronic and typical collusion between government and business in our society,” special prosecutor Park Young-soo, who spearheaded the pre-trial investigation into Samsung and Lee, said as the hearing began.

Lee declined to speak in his own defence Friday. But his lawyers maintained that the prosecution had yet to show categorically that the tycoon asked for specific favours when he met with President Park. Lee felt he couldn’t turn down the demands of the country’s most powerful person, but didn’t know the donations could go to her friend, his lawyers argued.

Hearings will resume April 13. Dubbed the “trial of the century,” the proceedings now underway threaten to expose a complex web of ties between the government and the nation’s largest corporations, and have cast uncertainty over succession at South Korea’s biggest conglomerate. Detained outside the capital since February, Lee must win the trial to resume guiding a $260 billion corporation trying to salvage its reputation after a series of exploding phones forced the eradication of the marquee Note 7 line.

Friday’s hearing at Seoul’s Central District Court coincided with the release of Samsung’s best quarterly earnings in almost four years. The world’s largest maker of smartphones reported a better-than-projected 48 per cent rise in operating income to 9.9 trillion won ($8.7 billion) for the March quarter, fuelled by robust sales of memory chips and displays. The trial also overshadowed the start of pre-orders in Korea for the S8 — Samsung’s answer to Apple’s iPhone.