Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee sued by elder brother for inheritance

SEOUL, Feb. 14 (Yonhap) -- The elder brother of Samsung Electronics Co. chairman Lee Kun-hee has filed an inheritance suit, seeking the return of a massive amount of stocks he said the chairman secretly incorporated into his assets, a Seoul court said Tuesday. Lee Maeng-hee, the second-eldest of the seven children of Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-chull, asked in the suit that the Seoul Central District Court order his younger brother Kun-hee to return 8,240,000 shares in Samsung Life Insurance Co. and 20 stocks in Samsung Electronics Co., along with 100 million won (US$89,000), according to the court's records. The elder Lee, 81, said his younger brother concealed a mass of group stocks, which their father held under the names of several Samsung Group executives. Upon their father's death in 1987, the chairman, the successor to the bulk of the conglomerate, covered up the secretly-held stocks and transferred them into his own pocket, the elder brother said, claiming his inheritance rights to part of them. "The concerned stocks of Samsung Life and the life insurance firm itself were assets put in a trust under the name of non-heirs, and they should have been apportioned to the heirs according to law," the elder Lee said in the court records. "Upon our father's death, Chairman Lee did not inform peer heirs and heiresses of the trust and unilaterally put them under his own name." The elder Lee is the father of Lee Jay-hyun, the chairman of food-maker CJ Group. Samsung Group declined to comment on the suit, saying, "The group has no specific stance on the case." (END)