Prosecutors zero in on suspicious Samsung accounts

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean prosecutors probing corruption accusations against the giant Samsung Group said on Friday they had narrowed their focus down to around 400 accounts that might be linked to an alleged slush fund.

A former top legal executive with the country's biggest conglomerate last month accused Samsung of running a 200 billion won ($212.7 million) fund to bribe public officials to avoid investigation into its operations.

"The list of accounts has become a lot shorter," a prosecution official said by telephone. "It's roughly about 300 or 400."

Media reports have said the number of accounts searched by prosecutors was well in excess of 1,000.

The former Samsung employee, Kim Yong-cheol, said the firm hid the illicit funds in scores of deposit accounts in the names of current and former executives.

The company, whose group sales are equivalent to about a sixth of the entire economic output of the world's 13th largest economy, has denied any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors will hand over records of the accounts to a new team of investigators led by an independent counsel, which is expected to begin work in January, the official said.

The country's family-owned conglomerates, known as "chaebol," have been the backbone of its dramatic economic rise but in recent years a number of their top executives have been convicted of corruption, the result of what critics say have been too cozy ties between politicians and business leaders.

(Reporting by Jack Kim, editing by Jonathan Thatcher)