[Poor Management, Internal Celebration] Kim Moon-gi "Daejang-dong, Proper and Desirable Development"

Direct Involvement in Daejang-dong Private Projector Selection, Evaluation Completed in Just One Day... Prosecution Likely to Examine Entire Process

Pan-gyo Daejang District Panorama, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province / Asia Economy

[Asia Economy Reporter Baek Kyunghwan] "We want our citizens to benefit from the profits... Daejang-dong is a desirable and proper development."

Kim Moon-gi, Head of Development Project Division 1 at Seongnam Urban Development Corporation, who participated in the selection process of the project implementer for the 2015 Daejang-dong development, said, "We will ensure that the profits generated are not taken outside the region or externally, but remain with our citizens." He also argued that if Seongnam Urban Development Corporation had not participated, there would have been no opportunity to allocate land for housing supply to the citizens. He evaluated the Daejang-dong development as a "desirable and proper development."

On the 6th, after confirming Kim’s remarks during the 2016-2017 Seongnam City Council audit, it was found that he, along with Yoo Dong-gyu, former head of Seongnam Urban Development Corporation, who is a key figure in the current case, oversaw the overall work of the Daejang-dong development.

In fact, Kim directly participated in the process of selecting private developers for the Daejang-dong development and later took a position as a director of the project implementer, 'Seongnam’s Garden' (Seongnam-ui Tteul). Kim and Yoo both joined the Seongnam City Facilities Management Corporation in 2010. It is known that their acquaintance began when Yoo, who was serving as the remodeling union president, met Kim, then sales manager at Dongbu Construction.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office’s special investigation team for the Daejang-dong development allegations decided to summon Kim on this day, considering that the current suspicions began with the involvement of private developers. The reason why individuals involved in Seongnam Urban Development Corporation’s selection of Seongnam’s Garden were prioritized for investigation is for the same reason. The evaluation to select the Seongnam’s Garden consortium as the preferred negotiator was completed in just one day, raising suspicions of a prearranged decision.

In particular, Kim caused controversy by making statements that seemed to represent Seongnam’s Garden during past city council audits. In the audit conducted in October 2018, Kim did not disclose the contents of the business agreement and shareholder agreement, nor the process of calculating the development profit of 550 billion KRW.

Despite repeated protests from some council members, he offered the compromise of "viewing" the documents, but in the following year’s audit, he refused to disclose basic supporting documents such as the business registration certificate and corporate registration certificate of Hwacheon Daeyu, citing "Article 28 of the business agreement on confidentiality" as a reason for non-cooperation.

Eventually, at the year-end audit in 2020, there was an opinion to replace Kim as a director of Seongnam’s Garden. Although he was appointed as a director of the project implementer representing Seongnam Urban Development Corporation, it was argued that he was not fulfilling his role properly. At that time, one council member said, "The corporation is not playing its proper role on site," and asked, "Can’t we replace him with someone who can strongly fulfill the role?"

Because of this, the investigation team is expected to hear from Kim about the process in which excessively high profits were allocated to the private developer (project implementer Seongnam’s Garden) in the Daejang-dong development. The investigation team plans to conduct a full-scale investigation this week targeting Hwacheon Daeyu and Seongnam Urban Development Corporation officials. It was reported that the day before, they focused on investigating the use of dividends and sales income received by Hwacheon Daeyu, targeting Kim, an executive known to have handled accounting-related work at Hwacheon Daeyu.

Former and current executives of Seongnam Urban Development Corporation were also summoned one after another. They investigated Hwang Ho-yang, former president of Seongnam Urban Development Corporation who took office in 2015, and Han, a key team leader in the Daejang-dong project. Then, they re-summoned accountant Jung Young-hak, who submitted a recording containing lobbying evidence, and Yoo, the former head who was arrested on the 3rd, to the prosecution.

Based on the investigation results, the team plans to summon Kim Man-bae, the major shareholder of Hwacheon Daeyu, for questioning. Kim is known to have discussed providing money and goods to Yoo in the recorded files by accountant Jung and was directly involved in recruiting a high-level advisory group from the legal community.

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