Samsung Electronics came under fire after the firm allegedly paid compensation to leukemia victims and the families on the condition of giving up criminal and civil suits and making it confidential.
The company reportedly required the victims to sign the consent form, which reads that the victims should return the money if they break the promise. Samsung's official denied the claim, saying it would look into the case. Earlier, the nation's largest smartphone maker announced that it would compensate 30 leukemia victims.
Eun Soo-mo, lawmaker of liberal New Politics Alliance for Democracy, revealed the consent form issued by Samsung Electronics, on Thursday during a press briefing.
The form reads that the victims should not file any criminal and civil suits against Samsung Electronics, all the details of the agreement should be confidential and in case of violation all the compensation should be returned.
Eun said, "(Samsung) attempted to make it all confidential through the compensation and forced them to agree not to file any suits."
"This is no different from the past case when the company individually contacted the families of late Hwang Yoo-mi and Park Ji-yeon to make them give up applying for industrial accident on the condition of receiving hundreds of millions of won," she added.
"It is suspected that the company tried to conceal the occupational disease issues again."
Samsung's official said, "We did not receive the consent form from the victims and did not also force them to sign the agreement,” adding, "The form revealed by Eun seems like a draft discarded. We haven't yet identified that whether the documents were leaked or mistakenly mixed into the files."
Samsung also added, "We have looked into all the documents from the victims and did not find any such forms Eun presented."
