By Kim Jae-won
The National Tax Service (NTS), together with the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office (SPO), is investigating illegal capital outflow cases, of which the amount of money is estimated to be up to 1 trillion won, to prevent national wealth from going beyond the boundary.
The NTS has already disclosed a plan to find tax dodging overseas.
The NTS plan is focusing on ferreting out overseas corporate and individual slush funds and levying hefty punishments on those involved.
For example, a high punitive tax will be slapped on those who fail to report overseas accounts holding 1 billion won, even for transfers.
Plus, the emphasis of regular corporate tax audits, which are conducted every four or five years, will be shifted to investigating suspicions regarding overseas slush funds.
At the same time, prosecutors uncovered about 100 billion won of funds that had gone to offshore accounts illegally, chasing the flow of money in close cooperation with foreign investigation agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the U.S., and other prosecutors’ offices in China, Canada and Australia among others.
The international capital pursuit team of the prosecutors’ office is investigating the former chief executive of LIG Nex1. Lee has allegedly sent 10 billion won overseas to slush fund.
The team is also investigating 2,000 suspects, which were involved in 250 crimes, such as illegal capital outflow, bribery, embezzlement, breach of trust, drug trafficking and international crimes.
10 of them will be summoned by the team, including Sungwon Corp. Chairman and CEO Jeon Yoon-soo, who fled to the U.S., without paying employees’ salaries.
In addition, a taskforce will be formed as part of the permanent NTS apparatus and empowered to go after overseas tax evaders, officials said. Special NTS agents will be sent to so-called tax havens and global financial hubs that are often used as bases to divert corporate and individual funds for tax evasion purposes.