By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
Some military attaches at South Korean embassies overseas have been involved in accounting fraud by illegally transferring funds to their bank accounts or misappropriating the money for private purposes, state auditors said Friday.
The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) recently reported the cases to the Ministry of National Defense, calling for punishment of the military attaches involved, a BAI official said.
According to the agency, a military attache dispatched to the embassy in Germany transferred some 7,500 euro (some $11,000) including value-added tax refunded from Germany's tax agency to his bank account in 2006 without reporting the revenue to the Korean government.
Another attache at the same embassy used 1,000 euro sent from the Defense Ministry in Seoul to be spent on Armed Forces Day events for personal purposes, it said.
The attache falsely reported to the ministry that he relayed the money to the embassy, it said.
In another development, the BAI said foreign offices of the Bank of Korea have been operated carelessly.
Despite the bank's restructuring in 2000, the number of workers at foreign offices increased from 42 to 45, it said.