In Korea, “han” is the deep, accumulated grief of injustice carried over time – the wound that waits, remembers, and knows exactly when the bill comes due.
Samsung sells memory. Michael Page hosts a Samsung client profile like this is just another shiny technology trophy. Lovely. Then TCAP checks the circuit board and finds Samsung’s DRAM guilty plea, a $300 million US criminal fine and the stink of a memory cartel still hot under the plastic. Page saw Samsung. TCAP saw memory with a criminal record, a brand profile with cartel grease under the keys, and a bill that waited long enough to find the right fucking desk.
The Page Connection
Michael Page Malaysia has a Samsung client profile. Not a vague association, not a scraped logo, not some consultant whispering through a wet LinkedIn post. A Michael Page client profile, sitting there with Samsung in the shop window like the whole thing is just another clean technology handshake.
Samsung is exactly the kind of brand recruiters love to stand near. Phones, screens, chips, memory, appliances, innovation, global scale and that big blue corporate glow. The sort of name that makes a careers page look more expensive just by standing near it.
Page wants the reader to see prestige. TCAP sees a circuit board with old cartel grease under the solder.
Samsung Sells Memory
Samsung sells memory, which is a beautiful little accident for this one. Memory chips. DRAM. The invisible guts of computers, servers, phones, printers, game consoles and the endless humming shitpile of modern life. A product category built around storage, recall, speed and keeping hold of what matters.
So let’s remember. In 2005, Samsung agreed to plead guilty in the United States and pay a $300 million criminal fine for its role in a DRAM price-fixing conspiracy. The US Department of Justice said Samsung and its co-conspirators fixed prices of DRAM sold to certain customers between April 1999 and June 2002.
That is not a pricing misunderstanding. That is not “competitive dynamics”. That is not an ambitious sales team getting a bit spicy with the spreadsheet. That is a memory-chip cartel, and Samsung pleaded guilty.
The $300 Million Chip
The $300 million fine was not loose change thrown into a compliance fountain. At the time, it was described as the second-largest criminal antitrust fine in US history, and the DOJ said Samsung’s guilty plea was part of a widening investigation into DRAM price-fixing involving other manufacturers too.
The chips were not obscure little factory widgets nobody touched. DRAM sat inside the consumer and business technology people actually used: computers, servers, laptops, printers, electronic devices and the ordinary machinery of work and home.
That is why price-fixing in memory chips is so grubby. It does not just cheat a rival in a boardroom. It creeps into the price of the thing on the desk, hides inside the machine, and makes the customer pay for cartel behaviour one component at a time, like a tiny criminal tax soldered onto the motherboard.
Page saw a technology giant. The DOJ saw a felony price-fixing conspiracy. TCAP saw memory with a rap sheet.
The Cartel Under The Plastic
Samsung’s public brand is all gloss. Innovation, design, connectivity, smart homes, folding screens, big televisions, Galaxy phones, semiconductor dominance and blue-lit future bollocks with a launch event and some executive pretending the next rectangle will change the human condition.
Fine. The phones can be shiny. The screens can be bright. The corporate language can float around talking about excellence, trust and innovation until everyone in the room smells like hotel coffee and LED lighting.
It does not change the plea. Samsung agreed to plead guilty. Samsung paid the $300 million criminal fine. Samsung was part of the DRAM price-fixing scandal. That is the thing about memory: it keeps the file.
Michael Page’s Clean Little Client Profile
Michael Page’s Samsung client profile does what client profiles always do. It launders proximity into prestige. The recruiter does not need to say much, because the logo does the lifting. Samsung means global technology, serious offices, serious systems, serious careers, serious money and a little electric glow humming around the brand.
But Page Partners has already taught us how to read these things. The logo is never the whole story. The client profile is the front room. The regulator file is usually in the cupboard behind it, leaking something unpleasant through the hinge.
With Samsung, the cupboard is not hard to find. It is labelled DRAM, and it smells like price-fixing.
Financial Operations In Cartel Country
Recruitment is not neutral decoration. Recruiters help companies build the office bloodstream: finance, operations, sales, engineering, management, procurement, systems, compliance and all the polite corporate organs that keep the beast moving.
Samsung’s old scandal was not about a rogue cashier stealing batteries from a drawer. It was about pricing, markets, sales, customers, competition, coordination and commercial conduct. The money machinery.
So when Michael Page puts Samsung in the client-profile window, TCAP is allowed to ask the obvious question. What exactly is Page proud to stand beside? The technology? The logo? The careers? The memory chips? Or the corporate machine that once admitted to criminal price-fixing in the very memory market that helped make Samsung such a giant bastard in the first place?
The Consumer Tax Nobody Asked For
Price-fixing is one of those scandals corporate people try to make sound bloodless. Antitrust. Competition. Market conduct. Pricing coordination. Commercial discipline. Regulatory resolution. Very tidy. Very adult. Very “please do not picture ordinary people getting rinsed”.
Fuck that.
A price-fixing cartel is a hidden hand in the customer’s pocket. It is a quiet little theft dressed as market behaviour. It is someone in the chain deciding the public can pay more because the people who make the components have agreed not to compete properly.
That is why the memory-chip scandal matters. It was not just a Korean electronics company getting a nasty letter from Washington. It was a cartel in the bloodstream of technology, and Michael Page’s clean little Samsung profile sits on top of that history like a brochure placed over a burn mark.
The Executive Memory Problem
The DRAM scandal also produced individual consequences. Samsung executives were caught in the wider price-fixing file, and at least one Samsung executive later received prison time in connection with the DRAM conspiracy.
That is the point where the corporate fog clears for a second. Not just company. People. Meetings, calls, emails, pricing discussions, customers, market impact, guilty pleas, fines and sentences. The stuff that turns “corporate controversy” into a room full of actual human decisions.
And yet the brand rolls on. The client profile survives. The recruiter smiles. The world moves to the next device launch. TCAP does not move that quickly. TCAP remembers.
The Client-Profile Trick
This is Page’s favourite little trick. Take a name people recognise, put it in a client profile, let the brand do the seduction, and hope nobody opens the file cabinet behind the showroom.
Samsung becomes innovation, technology, opportunity, careers, growth and global prestige. The reader is not meant to think about DRAM price-fixing. The reader is meant to think about shiny phones, bright screens, impressive offices and well-paid roles.
But TCAP does not read client profiles like a graduate applicant. TCAP reads them like a search warrant with a sense of humour.
Samsung’s client profile may look clean. The memory file is not.
The Page Partners Pattern
This is where Page Partners has gone now. Imperial was recruitment smoke for the cancer factory. BAT was the second black lung. HSBC was PageGroup’s cartel-laundry banker. Evonik was the chemical family tree from hell. The disability case study was the inclusion trophy cabinet. Vivo Telefônica was the cartel-fined phone shop. Neon was the data-leak bank. Walmart was the bribe-slick superstore. PicPay was the beef-baron banking app. OneAdvanced was the NHS 111 ransomware hangover.
Samsung is the memory cartel chip.
Different sectors. Same Page habit. Find the shiny customer. Polish the logo. Write the client profile. Pretend the regulator files, guilty pleas, fines, lawsuits, data breaches, labour stink and dead historical weight are all somebody else’s problem.
Page keeps finding trophy names. TCAP keeps finding the stains under the trophies.
The Question For Page
Why Samsung?
Why this client profile?
Why put a technology giant with a $300 million criminal antitrust fine in the shop window like the cartel history is just a dead pixel?
Did anyone at Michael Page read the DOJ file? Did anyone ask about Samsung’s DRAM guilty plea? Did anyone ask whether a company that sells memory, and once pleaded guilty in a memory price-fixing conspiracy, might be a little too perfect for TCAP to ignore?
Did anyone ask whether “client profile” starts to sound sick when the profile has cartel grease under its fingernails? Or did Page just see the logo, the prestige, the careers glow and another chance to stand next to a giant brand while pretending the public record lives in another room?
Because from here, it looks simple. Page saw Samsung. The DOJ saw price-fixing. TCAP saw the memory chip sweating.
The Closing Circuit
Michael Page can keep the Samsung client profile. Phones, screens, chips, memory, innovation, global technology and big brand shine. Lovely.
But TCAP is not reading it like a recruiter. TCAP is reading it like an antitrust file with a charging cable.
Page saw a technology trophy. The DOJ saw a DRAM price-fixing conspiracy. TCAP saw memory with a criminal record and a calculator sweating cartel grease.
That is not just a client profile. That is a circuit board with a guilty plea soldered to it.
And if Samsung sells memory, TCAP stores it better. I asked Page for the file almost a year ago, waited, and now the bill is finding the right desks. Han came due.
Unredacted.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Sources
- Michael Page Malaysia – Samsung Client Profile
- United States Department of Justice – Samsung Agrees To Plead Guilty And To Pay $300 Million Criminal Fine For Role In Price Fixing Conspiracy
- Wired – Chip Crooks Cheat Retailers
- BBC News – Samsung Men Admit Price Fixing
- European Commission – Antitrust: Commission Fines DRAM Producers €331 Million For Price Cartel
- The New Yorker – Alone In The Dark