Mutual Finance Sector, 51.1 Billion KRW in Embezzlement and Financial Incidents Over 5 Years

It has been confirmed that the amount of financial accidents that occurred over the past five years in mutual finance sectors such as Saemaeul Geumgo, Nonghyup, Shinhyup, and Suhyup has exceeded 50 billion KRW.

Yoon Chang-hyun, a member of the People Power Party, is speaking at the National Assembly Members' Office Building on the 24th. Photo by Kim Hyun-min kimhyun81@

According to data submitted on the 29th by the office of Yoon Chang-hyun, a member of the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee from the People Power Party, to the Financial Supervisory Service and each mutual finance central association, a total of 144 financial accidents such as embezzlement occurred from 2019 to the first half of this year, with a cumulative accident amount of 51.143 billion KRW.

Of this, the recovered amount was 42.569 billion KRW, leaving an unrecovered balance of 13.392 billion KRW.

In the case of Saemaeul Geumgo, the number of accidents over five years was 43 cases, with an accident amount of 25.542 billion KRW, making it the largest in scale.

This was followed by Nonghyup (49 cases, 18.878 billion KRW), Suhyup (14 cases, 3.374 billion KRW), and Shinhyup (38 cases, 3.349 billion KRW) in order. The Korea Forest Cooperative had zero financial accidents in the past five years.

As embezzlement is repeatedly occurring in the mutual finance sector, there have been continuous calls to improve internal controls and resolve issues related to the imperialistic chairpersons and heads of cooperatives. Although each central association cracks down on misconduct in their treasuries or cooperatives, it is practically difficult to properly supervise the hundreds to thousands of individual cooperatives nationwide.

In particular, the mutual finance sector is overseen by different ministries: the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (Saemaeul Geumgo), the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (Nonghyup), and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries (Suhyup), while the financial authorities only have supervisory authority over soundness. In the case of Saemaeul Geumgo, even supervision is coordinated between the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Financial Services Commission.

Regarding this, Assemblyman Yoon said, "Customers expect the same trust from banks and mutual finance institutions such as Saemaeul Geumgo, but the frequency of accidents is much more severe in mutual finance." He added, "To ensure that ordinary people can trust and entrust their money, internal controls must be reorganized, and mutual finance trust recovery projects at the level of each central association, such as introducing frequent and cross-inspection methods, should be promptly established."

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