63 indicted in military corruption cases

Over 60 people were indicted in the government’s all-out probe into corruption of arms procurement projects since last year, investigators said Wednesday.

The government’s special joint investigation team said 63 officials, including 38 former and incumbent military officers, would face trials over allegations of fabricating documents or taking kickbacks while they were handling defense projects. The scale of the corruption was nearly 1 trillion won ($870 million), they said.

The announcement came about eight months after the state launched a large-scale probe into irregularities in the defense acquisition programs. The joint investigation team was formed with over 100 prosecutors and military investigators, the largest joint probe scale in history.

Of the 38 indicted military officers, the navy accounted for the most with 28, followed by the air force and army with six and four, respectively. Ten of the 38 were either former or incumbent generals or admirals, officials said.

Document fabrication, property crimes and bribery were the most common charges. 

The lack of a monitoring system, the exclusive military culture and moral laxity contributed to the corruption, investigators claimed.

“As it has been confirmed that the arm project corruption was a systematic irregularity accumulated over a long period, (the joint probe team) will extend the probe to the end of this year to root out the deep-seated crime,” the investigators said.

By Lee Hyun-jeong (rene@heraldcorp.com)