Samsung Group, South Korea's biggest conglomerate, Wednesday downgraded its Group Reformation Headquarters and cut the number of personnel at the chaebol's powerful control tower 33 percent.

Samsung changed the title of the headquarter office tentatively to the Strategy Planning Division, trimming the number of teams from five to three and the headcount from 147 to 99.

The law division, one of the major teams of the head office with approximately 15 prominent lawyers and ex-judicial officers, was transferred to an association of Samsung subsidiary heads.

``These steps are aimed at making our headquarter organization a forward-looking one while rendering affiliates more independence,'' a Samsung spokesman said.

The Group Reformation Headquarters has come under constant criticism as it was accused of flexing its muscles to the degree of intervening in the management of affiliates.

Samsung Vice Chairman Lee Hak-soo, the second-in-command of the group, will continue to lead the downsized control tower just as he did with the Group Reformation Headquarters.

The measures are parts of packages that Samsung's embittered chairman, Lee Kun-hee, promised early last month to mute mounting criticism of him and the group.

Included in the pledges are to set up an independent ombudsman to oversee the group operations and to donate 800 billion won to society, on top of overhauls of the headquarter office.

In addition, the group withdrew a pair of lawsuits associated with the dubious transfer of Samsung shares to Lee's children, including Lee's only son Jae-yong, the heir apparent of the chaebol.

Lee and Samsung have suffered from a tarnished image after a slew of claims that the group exerts too much prowess across the country, sometimes in an unlawful fashion, as shown by cases of wealth transfer or lobbying of politicians.

Lee even stayed in the United States five months purportedly to avoid prosecutor's questions about Samsung's supply of political slush funds to presidential candidates in the 1997 election.

By: DocMemory
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