The Korean business in Russia

No more Samsung cell phones in Russian cell shops

It is generally believed that foreign companies in Russia always run their business honestly and lawfully, whereas Russian companies are all controlled by mafia. Well, this assumption is being ruined currently: foreign companies can be sly too.

Everyone knows of those scandals with America’s largest corporations, and everyone was shocked by them. Corruption scandals happen in Western countries too, but in Russia foreigners feel the real freedom, as it seems, although they manage to settle any kind of problems, having a thick pack of $100 notes in their pockets.

Cnews reported that Russia’s largest cell dealer, the company Euroset, broke off the relations with the Russian representative office of the South Korean company Samsung Electronics. As the management of the company said, the Koreans had performed the incomplete delivery of their cell phones in the sum of 170000 euros.

Samsung has done such incomplete deliveries three times already. All the packages were safe and sound. It occurred to Euroset that the number of cell phones registered in the invoice could not fit the volume, which was registered in shipping documents of the warehouse. In addition to that, as the administration of the company said, one of the batches of Samsung cell phones contained 44 boxes without cell phones inside, although seals and stamps were alright. The boxes were all opened, examined and counted in notary public’s and committee’s presence. The whole process has been filmed. Euroset says that Koreans were notified of the coming examination, they were invited to participate, but Samsung ignored the invitation.

Euroset’s manager Yevgeny Chichvarkin went to Samsung for explanations. However, the manager of the telecommunication department of the Russian division of the Korean company did not give him a hearty welcome. As Chicharkin claimed, the Korean manager was driving at the need of a bribery, when he was talking to him: “He was also implying that Samsung was a big, powerful company, and that real gangsters could get involved in the conflict.” We do not know, if the Euroset manager offered the Korean guy to “communicate” with tough Russian mobs, but those negotiations had a happy end for Euroset: Samsung agreed to compensate the incomplete deliveries and there would be no more business relations with it.

Euroset has 120 cell salons in Moscow, so it could sell more Siemens or Ericsson phones instead. Does a Russian customer really has a big passion for those South Korean cell toys? Not really.

However, the problem of the relations between Russian companies and foreign giants still remains. Needless to mention that the foreign production of better quality is in greater demand in Russia, and the links with import sources always guarantee constant profit. On the other hand, Russian companies can get more captious, when they develop and grow. We wish some Russian producer could deliver at least one model of a Russian cell phone – a small, nice and cheap little phone? But the government does not really want to discuss the issue of the Russian cell market.

Dmitry Slobodyanyuk PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov