147 KT Officials Nabbed for Receiving Kickbacks

By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff Reporter

A total of 147 current and former executives and employees of KT Corp., the nation's largest fixed-line telephony company, are suspected of having received kickbacks from subcontractors, prosecutors said Tuesday.

A district prosecution office in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, apprehended the staffers and dozens of subcontractors on suspicions of taking and providing bribes, indicting seven with physical detention and 47 without restriction.

The prosecution ordered KT to take internal disciplinary action against 123 staffers who received relatively small bribes. Investigators are also looking to extradite a subcontracting company president who fled to China.

The prosecution did not disclose the names of the officials.

In one case, a senior KT official allegedly received a bribe of 350 million won ($275,000) from a subcontractor between December 2004 and July 2006 in return for ignoring shoddy construction work and providing other ``favors.''

A division chief received 80 million won from junior employees between January 2004 and June 2006, while other officials allegedly received 1.8 billion won from 23 subcontractors.

A worker from a subcontractor, who threatened to file complaints against the KT officials, took 95 million won from the company in return for not reporting them to the police.

The KT officials received bribes regularly in return for awarding optical cable network and other construction orders to the subcontractors. They were given from 3 to 5 percent of the contract value, the prosecutors' office said.

In another case, retired officials received 3 million won in monthly kickbacks disguised as if they were still working for the company.

An internal audit by KT discovered the bribery cases first and the company filed complaints against the staffers with the prosecution.

meeyoo@koreatimes.co.kr

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