A South Korean court will send seven former Samsung employees to jail. They were accused of illegally obtaining and transferring technology related to semiconductor production to Chinese companies.
The Wall Street Journal has learned of the court’s decision. The perpetrators reportedly worked at Semes, a subsidiary of Samsung and South Korea’s largest maker of displays and semiconductor equipment.
The stolen information contained blueprints and component lists obtained from “misappropriated” photographs in 2018-2020. The very fact of the theft was recorded in 2020, but the court decision was made only now.
The transferred technologies are classified as “key national technologies” protected by the state, which affected the severity of the sentence.
It should be noted that former researcher Semes used the stolen technology to create similar equipment intended for export. The Nam company he founded earned $59.8 million in supplies to Chinese companies and research institutes.
Six other Semes employees were sentenced to various prison terms of up to 2.5 years in prison. During Nam’s work, they created 24 drawings of semiconductor cleaning equipment and sold 14 machines to China.
Author:
Ahmed Sadulayev
Source: RB
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