Tax dodgers named online

Former JU Group CEO owes most in unpaid taxes


The National Tax Service on Monday revealed a list of 1,313 tax dodgers, with their names made public via the Internet for the first time here.

Names on the list, including 686 individuals and 627 corporate bodies, failed to pay taxes of 700 million won ($615,000) or more over the past two years.

The taxation agency said the number of tax dodgers decreased by more than half compared to last year’s 2,797, while the amount of unpaid taxes declined from 5.6 trillion won to 3.2 trillion won.

The average amount of arrears was 2.5 billion won ― 2.24 billion won for individuals and 2.78 billion won for corporations.

Joo Soo-do, former chairman of the multilevel marketing firm JU Group, owed the highest amount with 57 billion won in 40 cases.

Joo, 55, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2007 for embezzling 1.84 trillion won from the company’s sales people.

The largest defaulter among corporate bodies was JU Development, a real estate unit of JU Group, with 109.4 billion won in arrears.

The NTS has made public the list of defaulters since 2004, and the criterion was lowered from 1 billion won to 700 million won in December 2009.

People subject to the measure were decided on Nov. 17 after the agency offered a six-month period for payment and explanation from March.

Starting this year, their personal information, including name, age, address, job and tax arrears, will be revealed via major portal sites such as Naver for a week from Monday.

About 75 percent of them live or have a workplace in the metropolitan area, with 72.9 percent of them in their 40s or 50s, the agency found.

“In order to root out intentional and frequent tax defaults, we will strengthen the ongoing investigation of a special task force team and expand disciplinary measures,” said a NTS official.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)