National police arrested this week a low-ranking government official on charges of taking kickbacks from car importers while issuing environmental certificates for foreign automobiles.
Given the rampant corruption in the civil service, the news should not surprise many, but this case is truly distressing.
Police said the man, a staffer of the Transportation Pollution Research Center, had been responsible for testing the emissions and noise levels of imported cars since 2009.
He allegedly abused his duty to extort and take kickbacks from car importers on 113 occasions, which police estimated brought him 32 million won. The bribery took place in the forms of cash, free meals and drinks, and even the purchase of an imported car at a considerable discount.
Police said the man selectively issued certificates within the legal period of 15 days, and as a result, importers of about half of the cars he tested had to wait one to two months.
According to police accounts, the official employed all imaginable means to fatten his pocket. He demanded car importers accompany him on his local and overseas trips. He was even entertained twice in a single day ― by different importers ― at the same bar, where a woman he knew well worked.
It is truly incomprehensible that a civil servant with this level of ethical standards had been left in a job vulnerable for corruption for six long years. Most difficult to understand is that this man’s extortion was stopped only after the office of the EU representative sent a complaint to the Environment Ministry, which led to a police investigation.
One cannot but wonder what government auditors and law-enforcement authorities had been doing. It is simply stupid that the National Institute of Environmental Research, which controls the TPRC, does not have the authority to audit the center.
What’s urgent is to consider ending the TPRC’s monopoly on environmental certification. Also needed is to set up an audit system to monitor the environmental certification process and put those who handle it under stricter ethics regulations.
It goes without saying that the case should ring alarm bells about corruption still prevalent in officialdom. Cases like this make the Park administration’s much-touted anticorruption campaign sound hollow.
