The government announced Thursday it will bring in a special inspector and reinforce its auditing body to beef up its scrutiny of state defense procurement deals, which have often been fraught with corruption.
The plan is part of an interim result based on the government’s on-going probe into the defense procurement sector.
As a succession of corruption-ridden transactions were revealed, the government launched a special investigation team a year earlier to look into suspicious procurement contracts.
Under the plan announced Thursday, the team will be hired from outside the government to take charge of the tightening scrutiny, the joint statement by the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of National Defense and the Defense Acquisition Program Administration said.
Directly under the wing of DAPA Minister Chang Myoung-jin, the inspector will be in charge of looking into whether DAPA’s transactions present any legal problems, according to the statement.
The size of the current auditing body under DAPA will be doubled as part of the scrutiny enhancement efforts.
The interim plan also includes toughened punishments on corrupt contractors, with those involved in corruption to be banned from government-led biddings for up to two years, which is longer than the current six-month ban.
“The plan announced this time will start to be implemented next year in the initial stage of countermeasures,” a government official said of the Thursday announcement. Further measures will be taken after the government probe team comes up with its final results, the official said.
Earlier this year, former Navy Chief of Staff Jung Ok-keun was sentenced to 10 years in prison for taking 770 million won ($673,000) from the shipbuilding STX Group in return for helping the group’s affiliate win deals to build the Navy’s guided missile patrol gun boat and convoy vessel.
Another former naval chief, Hwang Ki-chul, was also charged in a similar corruption case, but a local court cleared him of the charge earlier in the month.
Amid a host of corrupt defense acquisition cases, President Park Geun-hye has declared a no-tolerance policy on such misdeeds. (Yonhap)
