Legal insider says Samsung kept $216 mln slush fund

Samsung wields enormous power in South Korea by its sheer size. The group, with 58 affiliates as of late June, had combined sales of $159 billion in 2006, about one-sixth of the country's gross domestic product for that year.

Several top executives from the country's family-owned conglomerates, known as "chaebol", have been convicted of corruption over the years due to what critics say were cosy ties between politicians and business leaders.

(Additional reporting by Jessica Kim and Marie-France Han, writing by Jon Herskovitz, editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Sonya Hepinstall)