[2023 National Audit] Lee Bok-hyun, Financial Supervisory Service Chief, "Will Hold Mirae Asset Securities Fully Accountable"

Lee Bok-hyun, Governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, is reporting on duties at the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee's audit of the Financial Supervisory Service held on the 17th at the Financial Supervisory Service in Yeouido, Seoul. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

Lee Bok-hyun, Governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, reiterated that an investigation will be launched into Mirae Asset Securities for failing to report employee embezzlement.

At the comprehensive audit of the National Assembly's Finance and Economy Committee held on the 27th, Governor Lee stated regarding the controversy over Mirae Asset Securities' 'failure to report employee embezzlement,' "We will investigate the possibility of false reporting or intentional omission of reports and hold them accountable to the fullest extent."

This was in response to a question from Hwang Un-ha, a member of the Democratic Party of Korea, who said, "Ultimately, an incident involving approximately 70 billion KRW occurred, and there was also a civil lawsuit worth about 30 billion KRW filed by the victims, but the Financial Supervisory Service did not receive any reports," adding, "It took one year and six months after the incident to find out; isn't the supervision and reporting system a complete mess?"

The remarks refer to a recent case involving A (56), a private banker (PB) affiliated with Mirae Asset Securities, who embezzled part of over 70 billion KRW raised as fund investment money over 11 years from the family of a group chairman.

According to the prosecution, from December 2011 to January last year, A deceived 17 members of the family of group chairman B into subscribing to a tax-exempt fund guaranteeing a 10% return. Afterwards, A provided false balance statements as if profits had been made and collected a total of 73.4 billion KRW as fund investment money. The actual damage amount was identified as approximately 11.1 billion KRW. Mirae Asset Securities became aware of this fact in February last year, but the Financial Supervisory Service did not receive the incident report, and the report related to the civil lawsuit was delayed.

Regarding this, Governor Lee explained, "If there is a legal basis under individual laws, sanctions can be imposed for violations of obligations, but if there is no basis, it is practically difficult to impose sanctions," adding, "If changes to internal regulations are necessary at the authority level, we will report to the Financial Services Commission and have them review it."