Gyeonggi Province Affiliated Agencies Still Have 'Improper Contracts'... 54 Cases Detected

Gyeonggi Provincial Government Gwanggyo New Office Building

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] It has been revealed that public institutions under Gyeonggi Province continue to engage in improper business practices, such as preparing bidding documents with specifications that only satisfy specific companies and then contracting with them, or contracting with unqualified companies without verifying specialized construction licenses.

Gyeonggi Province announced on the 26th that it conducted a special management audit last September on seven public institutions: Gyeonggi Institute of Economy and Science Promotion, Gyeonggi Housing and Urban Development Corporation (GH), Gyeonggi Welfare Foundation, Gyeonggi Agricultural and Fisheries Promotion Institute, Gyeonggi Job Foundation, Gyeonggi Research Institute, and Gyeonggi Transportation Corporation. The audit uncovered 54 cases of improper conduct, leading to administrative actions. The audit was carried out by seven joint audit teams composed of the provincial audit office and citizen auditors.

The province took administrative measures such as warnings, corrections, and notifications for the 54 cases detected, imposed financial sanctions amounting to 9.51 million KRW, and requested related institutions to take personnel actions against 58 individuals, including disciplinary actions for 12 people and admonitions for 46 people.

For example, in the case of the Gyeonggi Institute of Economy and Science Promotion, when purchasing research equipment, bidding documents were prepared with specifications that only satisfied a specific company's products. Competitive bidding documents were also pre-obtained from a pre-selected company, and procurement bidding was promoted with common specifications that did not reflect the facts. After the bidding failed, a private contract was signed. The provincial audit office demanded severe disciplinary action against those responsible for improperly handling the purchasing tasks.

The Gyeonggi Welfare Foundation was found to have violated financial management regulations by not carrying over the remaining balance of grants received for its purpose projects to the following year and not requesting a reduction in the main budget, as well as allocating loan support funds as operating expenses.

The Gyeonggi Housing and Urban Development Corporation improperly managed existing housing purchase rental and maintenance projects by delaying payment for at least 103 days and up to 145 days after the contract end date without conducting maintenance work despite the usual defect repair period having passed.

The Gyeonggi Agricultural and Fisheries Promotion Institute arbitrarily selected companies without public competition for five construction projects and signed single-person private contracts. Among these, two projects contracted with unqualified companies without even verifying specialized construction licenses, drawing criticism. The province demanded light disciplinary action against those responsible for violating the local contract law by signing private contracts worth approximately 506 million KRW for five cases.

Choi Eun-soon, the provincial auditor, emphasized, "Although public institutions are making significant efforts with the start of the 8th civilian administration, their internal audit functions and internal controls are still insufficient. Moving forward, in addition to comprehensive and special audits of public institutions, we will actively work to prevent recurrence of similar cases through customized accounting and audit education and strengthen internal audit functions to ensure fair and transparent operation of public institutions."

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