Despite an official apology by Oxy Reckitt Benckiser on Monday, South Korea’s prosecution is reportedly zeroing in on executives from its head office in London over allegations that they connived to conceal evidence on the toxicity of humidifier sterilizers blamed for the loss of at least 103 lives here.
According to reports, the prosecution has decided to investigate officials at Reckitt Benckiser’s headquarters, after securing testaments and circumstantial evidences that they had remained silent even though they were aware of the lethal ingredients used for manufacturing the disinfectant product.
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Ata Safdar, CEO of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser, apologizes to the victims of the humidifier. Yonhap |
The prosecution is likely to ask for the cooperation of the U.K.’s Ministry of Justice to secure related documents and testimonies from executives involved in the allegations.
But questions still linger over the authority’s legal capacity as well as the practical challenges it faces ahead in investigating the global firm based overseas.
Legal experts say that it will be difficult for the prosecution to probe firms in foreign territories.
To make it work, authorities should work out the complex legal provisions based on the bilateral treaty between the two countries.
It will be nearly impossible to move British authorities to investigate the firm. And even if such investigative cooperation is possible, it would take a considerable amount of time --- too late to tranquilize the angry Korean public.
“It is obvious that Reckitt Benckiser could be responsible for the case as it holds a 100 percent stake in Oxy Korea. But the problem is that the South Korean prosecution holds no legal force to summon the officials in the London office to Seoul,” said a lawyer in Seoul.
In a similar case in 2008, the prosecution banned John Grayken, then head of the U.S. private equity fund Lone Star from leaving the country on suspicions that the government sold the Korea Exchange Bank at a below market price to the fund back in 2003. He was in Seoul to testify in a Seoul court as a witness in a stock rigging case involving Lone Star’s Seoul office.
The case could be used as a precedent to convince Oxy’s London office to accede to the investigation if the firm wants to stay clean from the case.
But it remains to be seen whether RB executives in London will accept the prosecution’s summonses. Questions also remain on whether the prosecution can substantiate the allegations enough to impose a travel ban on them.
With families of victims and civic activists calling the firm “a murderer,“ as well as President Park Geun-hye’s direct order to thoroughly investigate the case, the prosecution appears to have not many options but to go ahead.
A boycott of the British firm’s products is spreading fast. Representatives for the victims also filed a complaint with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office to investigate eight board members of the British firm including its chief executive officer Rakesh Kapoor. The headquarters in Britain is responsible for not conducting due safety checks since the product was first sold in 2001, they said. Korea’s Oxy merged with Britain’s Reckitt Benckiser in 2001.
By Cho Chung-un (
christory@heraldcorp.com)
