The voice of Lee Jae-yong (pictured), vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, was discovered among the recordings of phone calls stored in the "Vice Chairman Calls" folder, which Samsung Bioepis, a subsidiary of Samsung BioLogics, deleted in preparation for a prosecutors' investigation last year. Prosecutors confirmed the voice of Lee after restoring the files with digital forensics.

Prosecutors believe the recording of Lee is evidence that the vice chairman personally managed issues concerning Samsung BioLogics, including the accounting fraud and the controversial call option. They are concentrating their investigation on identifying Lee's role in the destruction of evidence by Samsung.

According to the investigative reporting by the Kyunghyang Shinmun on May 22, Special Crimes Division 2 of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office confirmed a phone call between Vice Chairman Lee and an executive at Samsung Bioepis among the voice recordings in the folder, "Results of Calls with the Vice Chairman." The folder stores circumstantial evidence suggesting that Lee showed great interest in the "bio" business, which Samsung tried to develop into its flagship business, and received reports and gave instructions on issues concerning Samsung Bioepis.

The employees on the financial team of Samsung Bioepis deleted the files with "vice chairman" from the network folders (Kyunghyang Shinmun May 22, 2019 edition, pages 1 and 3) when the Securities and Futures Commission judged that the inaccurate accounting was intentional and reported the company to the Prosecution Service last July. The employees deleted 1GB of files that were stored in folders including, "Response to Biogen Proposal (Report to VC)."

Prosecutors have restored and are reviewing the files in the folder, "Response to Biogen Proposal (Report to VC)." Biogen partnered with Samsung BioLogics and cofounded Samsung Bioepis, and it has the right to exercise a call option on the company. One of the key points in the investigation is that Samsung concealed the liabilities from this call option and merged Cheil Industries, a parent company of Samsung BioLogics, with Samsung C&T in 2012-2014. Prosecutors believe the files were deleted under the direction of the Samsung Electronics business support task force, which was previously the future strategy office of Samsung. They suspect that the task force took the initiative and deleted the files to hide the fact that Lee had personally overseen the call option and the merger. A Samsung representative said, "We have no comment, since the matter is under investigation."

This day, the prosecutors requested arrest warrants for Kim Tae-han, CEO of Samsung BioLogics; Kim, a vice president overseeing the Samsung Electronics task force; and Park, a vice president at Samsung Electronics for allegedly scheming to destroy evidence.