The government said on the 22nd it will launch a joint special audit by related ministries to root out misconduct tied to NongHyup and strengthen transparency.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said it formed a government joint special audit team with the Office for Government Policy Coordination, the Financial Services Commission, the Financial Supervisory Service, and the Board of Audit and Inspection, and will conduct a special audit of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation and the NongHyup Foundation starting on the 26th. A total of 41 people, including personnel from public institutions and outside experts, will take part in the audit.
This special audit is a follow-up to a prior special audit conducted last year by the Agriculture Ministry. Earlier, on the 8th, the ministry released interim results of the NongHyup special audit. The ministry referred two suspected misconduct cases at the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation and the NongHyup Foundation to investigators and identified a total of 65 problems, including improper institutional operations.
At the time, the audit found cases of waste of public funds, such as Chairman Kang Ho-dong of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation using a five-star hotel suite during overseas business trips and spending beyond the lodging cap. Separately, Kang has been under police investigation since Oct. last year on suspicion of receiving a 1 billion won bribe.
In this audit, the government plans to significantly expand the scope and participating agencies to launch a second verification, focusing on matters requiring further fact-finding such as NongHyup election irregularities and bribery, as well as tips on abnormal operations at member cooperatives.
The Office for Government Policy Coordination will oversee and coordinate the audit as a whole so that the joint audit involving multiple ministries can deliver tangible results. The Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service will focus on financial matters, and professional audit personnel from the Board of Audit and Inspection will also be supported and utilized.
Through this special audit, the government plans to swiftly verify the NongHyup misconduct allegations raised and announce the audit results in March. In addition, it will separately form the "(tentative) NongHyup reform task force" to discuss improvements to the election system, stronger internal controls, and governance restructuring, and will pursue institutional reforms in parallel.