South Korean police have arrested two former Samsung executives suspected of leaking Samsung secrets worth $3.2 billion to China. The authorities reported that one of the arrested suspects, 66-year-old Mr. Choi, set up a joint venture building chips in China alongside some local officials and served as its CEO (via Bloomberg). He was allegedly assisted by a plant designer, Mr. Oh, in this venture, while he also attempted to recruit other South Korean experts to work for him.
However, Choi’s arrest comes after being suspected of leaking Samsung memory technologies to build 20nm DRAM chips at the Chinese factory, Chengdu Gaozhen. Samsung is one of the leading memory manufacturers, working with other major companies like Nvidia to produce VRAM while offering its own storage and memory solutions. The police said Choi’s move “weakened the nation’s competitiveness when the countries are in a global chip war.” With the capture of the company’s head, the authorities claim that this will stop the operation of the Chinese venture. However, investigators are still looking into the case to determine if other cases of industrial espionage will spring up from this case.
