Translated by SOORIN KIM(voluntarily activist)
The Ministry for Special Affairs is a ministry created after the establishment of Lee Myung Park Administration.
Currently, Mr. Lee Jae Oh is in charge of the ministry office.
National Assembly Budget Office analyzed the
closing accounts on the major businesses of Office of Ministry for Special
Affairs in 2010. There seems to be some problems regarding spending of the
special affairs expenses.
There are two kinds of budget for special affairs in
the Ministry, expenses for special activities and expenses for special tasks.
The former is arranged directly for gathering information and investigation,
etc. The latter is arranged for the specific tasks like inspecting the organs
of government. According to the closing accounts we obtained, the special
activity expenses allocated for Office of Ministry for Special Affairs was 880
million; 870 million won was actually used and 3 million won was not used in
2010. 337 million won was originally for the special tasks expenses, 46 million
was diverted for other purposes, 192 million was used and 99 million was not
used.
2010 Ministry for Special Affairs closing accounts
The problem here was that the Office of
Ministry for Special Affairs did not present any documents to prove the money
was spent properly. The distribution of the special tasks expenses seems
inadequate as well.
Even more striking is 880million won, the
whole allocated money for the special activities was used by only one person,
Mr. Lee Ja Oh, the Minister. The method of distributing the money was need-base
by cash whenever Mr. Lee needed it and after being paid, he wrote a receipt
which only contains his name and amount.
So it’s impossible to know where the money went and for what purpose the
money spent. Imagine 877 million won being able to be used without a single piece
of proper receipt. This kind of budget execution is a serious problem in the
transparency aspect.
Furthermore, we found that the Office of
Ministry for Special Affairs had given a portion of the special tasks expenses
to certain individuals by fixed monthly payment. According to the Office of
Ministry for Special Affair’s explanation, total 41 staffs were on the payroll
of the expenses. These people were the whole staff members except for the political
post and the technical post. However, they were not identified as eligible
recipients of the money by any valid basis.
According to a report published by the
Democratic Party, the total budget for special affairs expenses arranged for
each ministry for fiscal year 2010 was about 865 billion won.
Special affairs expenses are called “don’t
ask budget”. No surprise at all. One can easily use the money without any
receipt. How can anybody check where the money goes? Citizens want to know. The
government needs to start putting efforts on building trust from the public and
to reinforce transparency.