A group of investigators in South Korea say that one of the former managers of Samsung Electronics stole the confidential information of the company’s processors in order to build a new chip factory in China by copying Samsung’s ideas.
The 65-year-old suspect, who also has a history of working for the Korean company SK Hynix, has been arrested. He has been accused of violating industrial technology protection laws and stealing trade secrets between 2018 and 2019.
He is said to have been looking to build an exact replica of one of Samsung’s factories in China. The factory that this person was looking to build was 1.5 km away from the main factory in Xi’an, China.
According to the TechCrunch report, the project of the former manager of Samsung to build a factory in China failed; Because the main sponsor of the project, which was an unknown Taiwanese company, has finally decided to refuse to inject more than 6 billion dollars into this project.
The former Samsung executive has received funding from investors in China and Taiwan to develop experimental chips based on Samsung technologies. The statement of the South Korean investigators comes as the tension between the United States and China in the field of chips has reached its maximum.
The defendant in the case, who has more than 25 years of experience in the chip industry, established chip production facilities in China and Singapore and hired more than 200 experts in this field from Samsung and SK Hynix companies.
Investigators say the stolen data could cost Samsung at least $233 million. According to Korean investigators, 6 other people cooperated with the former Samsung manager. Samsung has not responded to media requests for clarification.
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