Forgery of Official Purchase Card Sales Slips
Changwon District Court Sentences to 2 Years Imprisonment
A prosecution officer was sentenced to imprisonment for purchasing several items worth hundreds of millions of won, including pure gold and fuel gift certificates, for personal use using a government procurement card intended for official duties.
On the 4th, the Changwon District Court Criminal Division 7 (Presiding Judge Lee Hyun-joo) sentenced a man in his 40s, identified as A, to two years in prison on charges including breach of trust, according to a report by Yonhap News Agency on the same day. A, a public official belonging to a branch office in the Gyeongnam region, was tried for purchasing approximately 200 million won worth of personal items using a government procurement card about 1,240 times over nearly five years from March 2019 to last April. Responsible for purchasing goods, he indiscriminately bought various items such as famous brand T-shirts and sneakers, hotel vouchers, pure gold, and mobile gift certificates from online shopping sites.
A used the computer program 'Paint' to falsify expenditure documents for the government procurement card, making it appear as if the purchases were legitimate consumables for the government office. After buying fuel gift certificates for personal use, he altered the 'item, purchase location' section on the government procurement card sales slips to read 'Photo printing paper, B Corporation,' then printed them out to make it seem as though actual consumables were purchased for the office. He then falsely wrote expenditure approval documents as if he had received consumables such as photo printing paper and printer toner and submitted them to the finance officer. As a result of this incident, A was suspended from his position.
The court stated, "A, as a public official, violated his official duties by using public funds for personal gain and repeatedly forged a large number of official documents over a long period to conceal this, showing a very bad nature of the crime." However, the court also considered that he deposited the full amount of the damages in escrow, made efforts to restore the damage, and showed remorse for his wrongdoing when explaining the sentencing rationale.
Meanwhile, according to crime statistics released by the National Police Agency on the 28th of last month, 11,380 public officials affiliated with central government and local governments were booked by the police last year. Of these, more than half, 6,024 (52.9%), were judged to have criminal charges and were sent to the prosecution. The remaining 5,345 (47.0%) were not prosecuted, and 11 (0.1%) were given a disposition of suspension of investigation as witnesses. Additionally, 47 public officials (0.4%) were detained by the police last year.
By affiliated institution, provincial public officials numbered 2,424 (21.3%), the highest, followed by the Ministry of Education with 2,047 (18.0%), the National Police Agency with 1,760 (15.5%), the National Fire Agency with 664 (5.8%), and metropolitan city public officials with 644 (5.7%). However, these institutions are large in scale, so the number of suspects was relatively high; the ratio of suspects to total personnel in these institutions was mostly around 1%. The suspect ratio to total personnel was 1.4% for provincial public officials (175,108 personnel), 0.5% for the Ministry of Education (376,082 personnel), 1.3% for the National Police Agency (139,810 personnel), 1.0% for the National Fire Agency (66,337 personnel), and 1.0% for metropolitan cities (65,475 personnel).
Institutions with higher suspect ratios relative to total personnel included the Ministry of National Defense at 2.7% (31 out of 1,154), the National Assembly at 2.5% (121 out of 4,838), and the Ministry of Justice at 1.6% (376 out of 24,216). By crime type, intellectual crimes such as dereliction of duty (646) and abuse of authority (699) accounted for the largest number of suspects at 2,665 (23.4%), followed by ▲traffic crimes with 2,375 suspects (20.9%) ▲violent crimes with 1,726 suspects (15.2%) ▲serious crimes with 422 suspects (3.7%) ▲and theft crimes with 337 suspects (3.0%).
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