A Seoul subway television shows a file image of Lee Kun-Hee with her daughters on Wednesday.Ahn Young-joon / AP
The heirs of the recently deceased president of the Samsung group, Lee Kun-hee, reported on Wednesday that they will pay more than 10,790 million dollars (almost 9,000 million euros) in inheritance tax, a record amount in South Korea, to be able to access your fortune.
"The family plans to pay the full amount of inheritance tax over a period of five years in six installments, beginning in April 2021," they explain in a statement issued by the Samsung group.
More information
Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, South Korea's Richest Man, Passes Away
The last steps of 'dad Samsung'
The inheritance of Lee Kun-hee - the richest man in South Korea, who died last October at the age of 78, after leading the global expansion of Samsung Electronics - will be shared by his widow, Hong Ra-hee; his daughters, Lee Boo-jin and Lee Seo-hyun; and his son Lee Jae-yong,
the conglomerate's
de facto
leader
since a heart attack disabled his father in 2014 until the day he died. The latter is currently in prison, serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence, after courts ruled that he bribed the former South Korean government in exchange for favors. Among them, getting the go-ahead for a controversial 2015 merger of Samsung C&T and Cheil, which cemented its leadership.
Samsung —whose flagship Samsung Electronics is one of the world leaders in the smartphone and chip markets, represents a fifth of South Korea's GDP— assures in the note that the amount to be paid to the treasury “is more than half of the total equity value ”.
The Asian country, one of the economies that has had the best performance in recent decades, has very strict legislation on inheritances, which carries a very high tax rate.
In order to meet tax obligations, the successors of the head of the largest South Korean conglomerate have announced that they will give up paintings by Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Marc Chagall, or local Kim Whanki and Park Soo- Keun.
A legacy of 14.9 billion
In turn, the businessman's heirs also announced that they will donate some 900 million dollars (just under 750 million euros) to build a hospital and a research laboratory for infectious diseases and a program to pay for treatments for children with cancer and diseases. rare. And another 23,000 pieces of art collected by Lee Keun-hee, including 14 pieces included in the list of South Korean National Treasures, will go on to add to the collections of two museums in Seoul.
Lee's assets are estimated at more than € 14.9 billion. 80% corresponds to shareholdings whose distribution among the heirs has not been made public. It owned 4.18% of the group's star company, Samsung Electronics; 20.76% in the insurance company Samsung Life; 2.88% in the group's parent company, Samsung C&T; and 0.01% in battery manufacturer Samsung SDS. To these shares must be added a good number of real estate.
After inheriting in 1987 the group that his father, Lee Byung-chul, had started as a food business, he transformed a multinational specialized in cheap products into what, at the time of his heart attack, was the largest company in the world by volume of income in the information technology sector.
In 1993 he ordered a deep restructuring of Samsung Electronics - "change everything but your spouses and children," he told his executives - to focus less on sales volume and more on product quality.
Experts believe that the distribution of his inheritance will try to strengthen the leadership of Lee Jae-yong - who already controls 17.33% of Samsung C & T - over the group.
Samsung's global business volume is equivalent to 20% of South Korean GDP.