Seongnam City Violates Law in Sale of Sampyeong-dong Public Land... Board of Audit and Inspection Demands Severe Punishment

Seongnam City Hall

Seongnam City in Gyeonggi Province was found to have violated relevant laws, including private contract procedures, when selling approximately 25,000㎡ of city-owned land at 641 Sampyeong-dong, Bundang-gu, near Pangyo Techno Valley, to the NCSoft consortium for a software promotion facility site.

On the 16th, Seongnam City announced that the Board of Audit and Inspection recently notified them of the audit results, which included these findings, and requested severe disciplinary action against the related public officials.

Previously, in December 2020, after the fourth public offering, Seongnam City sold the city-owned land in Sampyeong-dong through a private contract to the NCSoft consortium, consisting of NCSoft Corporation, Samsung C&T Corporation, Korea Local Government Officials Mutual Aid Association, and Mirae Asset Global Investments Co., Ltd., for 837.7 billion KRW.

The site at 641 Sampyeong-dong was originally planned as the location for the Pangyo District Office during the 2009 Pangyo residential land development but was used as a temporary parking lot. Seongnam City sold this land to the NCSoft consortium on the condition that it be used as a software promotion facility.

The NCSoft consortium planned to build a software promotion facility on this site with a building area of approximately 330,000㎡, consisting of 14 floors above ground and 9 floors underground. They completed the payment for the sale last year and finalized the ownership transfer.

By the end of December last year, the NCSoft consortium obtained a building permit from Seongnam City and is preparing to commence construction.

Regarding this, the Board of Audit and Inspection confirmed during the regular audit of Seongnam City from May 25 to July 20 last year that Seongnam City sold the city-owned land to the NCSoft consortium without meeting the legal requirements for a private contract.

The Board of Audit and Inspection claims that before the ownership transfer of the city-owned land, the NCSoft consortium should have completed the ‘prior approval’ or ‘prior approval consultation’ procedures from the Minister of Science and ICT according to the Software Promotion Act but failed to do so.

Furthermore, the Board concluded that an unqualified NCSoft consortium was given the benefit of purchasing city-owned land worth around 800 billion KRW.

Accordingly, the Board of Audit and Inspection imposed severe disciplinary actions on three public officials at the city hall at the time, including the department head, team leader, and person in charge, who violated the relevant laws, and ordered Seongnam City to ensure the prompt completion of the ‘software promotion facility designation.’

In response to the Board’s findings, Seongnam City drafted a new agreement with the NCSoft consortium requiring them to obtain prior approval for the software promotion facility within 12 months from the building permit date and to receive the official designation within 6 months from the facility’s completion and usage approval date.

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