The fine in Taiwan came after an inquiry by the Fair Trade Commission alleged that Samsung had hired the services of an advertising firm, OpenTide Taiwan, to help it with online marketing. Sun Lih-Chyun, vice chairperson and spokesman, told the BBC’s Cindy Sui in Taipei that its investigations had indicated that OpenTide had hired students and bloggers to post remarks about Samsung and also criticise rivals’ products. He added that OpenTide gave weekly and monthly reports to Samsung, on online remarks, which indicated that Samsung was fully aware of what was going on.