2023-09-15 09:48:23
Choi Dal-young, First Deputy Secretary-General of the Board of Audit and Inspection, is giving a presentation on the request for investigation into ‘the production and use of major national statistics’ at the 3rd Annex of the Board of Audit and Inspection in Jongno-gu, Seoul on the 15th. yunhap news
On the 15th, the Board of Audit and Inspection requested the prosecution to investigate 22 people, including all four Blue House policy chiefs of the Moon Jae-in administration and former Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Hyun-mi, on charges of manipulating national statistics on real estate prices, employment statistics, and household income. In an announcement of the results of an interim audit of the ‘Preparation and Utilization of Major National Statistics’ held at the Board of Audit and Inspection in Jongno-gu, Seoul on this day, the Board of Audit and Inspection said, “(Moon Jae-in Blue House) Presidential Secretariat and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport directly or indirectly pressured the National Statistical Office and the Korea Real Estate Board to manipulate statistical figures or “He committed various illegal acts, including distorting statistical descriptive information,” he said. “During the Moon Jae-in administration, 22 people, including Blue House policy chiefs Jang Ha-seong, Kim Soo-hyun, Kim Sang-jo, former policy chief Lee Ho-seung, and former Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Kim Hyun-mi, were arrested for violation of statistical laws and abuse of power. “We requested an investigation on the 13th on charges of obstruction of business,” he said. Hong Jang-pyo, former Senior Secretary to the Blue House for Economic Affairs, Hwang Deok-sun, former Senior Secretary to the President for Job Creation, former First Vice Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Yoon Seong-won, and former Statistics Korea Commissioner Kang Shin-wook were also included in the investigation request. In addition to these people, the Board of Audit and Inspection also sent investigation reference materials for seven people suspected of crimes to the prosecution. The Board of Audit and Inspection said they were suspected of manipulating real estate price statistics. The Board of Audit and Inspection said, “The President’s Secretariat and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport exercised undue influence in the process of compiling statistics for the Korea Real Estate Board more than 94 times from June 2017 to November 2021, causing the statistical figures to be manipulated.” Since June 2017, immediately following the inauguration of the Moon Jae-in administration, the Board of Audit and Inspection has demanded that former policy director Jang Ha-seong report the weekly and preliminary values before announcing the final value of the house price fluctuation rate at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and to report the reason if the preliminary and confirmed values are higher than the weekly value. He said that he had put pressure on them and instructed them to manipulate the central figure to be lower than it actually was. The Board of Audit and Inspection said that this behavior continued to the successors to former Policy Director Jang (Kim Soo-hyun, Kim Sang-jo, and Lee Ho-seung). In the presentation, the Board of Audit and Inspection said, regarding the statistics for the third week of June 2019, an employee of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said, ‘If we continue like this, all of our lines will die. He also mentioned that he had requested the Korea Real Estate Board to show a downward trend in the rate of change in house prices, saying, “Please make it negative for one more week.” The Board of Audit and Inspection said that the Korea Real Estate Agency judged the sample survey to be meaningless from February 2019, so it arbitrarily predicted the rate of change for regarding 70 weeks and reported it as a weekly value. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport also put pressure on the Korea Real Estate Agency by resigning the director and reducing the budget. The Board of Audit and Inspection said that in addition to real estate prices, members of the Moon Jae-in administration also manipulated statistics in the areas of household income and employment. The Board of Audit and Inspection found that the Blue House Policy Office treated the decline in household income in the second quarter of 2017 as if income had increased by giving weight to the ‘income of households with employed people’ item. This audit, which was conducted four times and extended from September of last year to March of this year, has been criticized for being a targeted audit of the entire government. This time, the Board of Audit and Inspection requested a prosecutorial investigation under the authority of the Secretariat without going through an Audit Committee resolution before the final results were released. Some point out that in this way, the allegations once morest the parties are made public and public opinion is being waged. The office of Rep. Kim Young-bae of the Democratic Party of Korea said that between 2013 and 2023, the Board of Audit and Inspection has only announced investigation requests eight times. Five of them, including this one, were made during the current Secretary-General Yoo Byung-ho, including the killing of a civil servant in the West Sea and a non-profit private organization. There are many issues that have been suspected of being ‘political audits’, such as group subsidy audits and the status of new and renewable energy project promotion. Reporter Jang Ye-ji penj@hani.co.kr
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