Director of National Office: "Citizen Groups Waste Subsidies Recklessly, Budget to Be Abolished Next Year"

7th Central Administrative Agency Auditors Meeting
"Will take corresponding measures to abolish subsidy budgets for private organizations operated inefficiently"

Bang Moon-gyu, Minister of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, stated on the 7th, "When preparing next year’s budget, please take corresponding measures such as budget abolition through bold restructuring of the budget for subsidies to private organizations, which have been operated inefficiently so far."

Minister Bang made these remarks during his opening speech at the Central Administrative Agency Auditors’ Meeting held at the Government Seoul Office in the afternoon, saying, "Each ministry should promptly request investigations or audits by the Board of Audit and Inspection depending on the severity of the misconduct."

Minister Bang emphasized, "Institutional improvements must be made in parallel to fundamentally block the fraudulent use of subsidies," and added, "The scope of verification by external agencies and accounting audits should be expanded promptly." However, he also noted, "Generous rewards will be provided for reports with high public value."

He also called for countermeasures. He said, "Each ministry should meticulously re-examine the audit results and prepare measures to prevent recurrence," and mentioned, "Strictly take necessary legal actions such as subsidy returns, exclusion from future government subsidy projects, and public disclosure of names as stipulated in the subsidy laws."

The Office for Government Policy Coordination has been conducting audits on government subsidies to private organizations. From January to April, audits were conducted on about 12,000 government subsidy projects (worth 6.8 trillion won), revealing 1,865 cases of fraud and corruption involving approximately 31.4 billion won. The Office discussed follow-up measures related to the audit results at the meeting held that day.