Public Procurement Service Sanctions 60 Cases of Fraud and Recovers 350 Million KRW in Unfair Profits

[Asia Economy (Daejeon) Reporter Jeong Il-woong] The Public Procurement Service (PPS) will take strong measures such as restricting bidding participation qualifications and recovering unfair profits from companies caught engaging in unfair procurement practices.

The PPS announced on the 5th that it detected and sanctioned 60 cases of unfair practices that undermined bidding fairness in the first quarter of this year.

Among the detected cases, bid rigging accounted for the largest number with 30 cases, followed by contract non-fulfillment with 14 cases, contract condition violations with 6 cases, companies causing damage to the state with 5 cases, other poor quality, shoddy and fraudulent construction with 2 cases, contract non-execution with 2 cases, and bribery with 1 case.

A representative example includes 27 companies that colluded to ensure a specific party won the bid during the COVID-19 vaccine procurement process, as well as companies that bribed related public officials or caused damage to the state through fraud during contract execution with these companies.

In addition, the PPS detected four companies involved in unfair practices such as violation of direct production requirements and delivery of products different from contract specifications, deciding to recover a total of 351 million KRW in unfair profits.

Information on sanctioned companies and those subject to unfair profit recovery is disclosed on the Nara Marketplace, allowing all public institutions to verify it.

The PPS emphasized that these companies are prohibited from participating in bids issued by national agencies and local governments during the period of bidding qualification restrictions in accordance with the National Contract Act and related laws.

Lee Sang-yoon, Director of Planning and Coordination at the PPS, stated, “The PPS will strictly respond by restricting bidding participation qualifications for companies that disrupt public procurement order as stipulated by law. Especially for unfair procurement acts with significant social impact or damage amounts, we will disclose the information externally in the interest of public right to know, to establish a sound and fair procurement market.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.