Tax investigator named for overseas probes

By Kim Jae-won

The National Tax Service (NTS) said Monday it was making the Offshore Compliance Enforcement Center (OCEC), which investigates illegal capital outflow and overseas tax evasion, a permanent entity.

Officials said the current — temporary — 15-member OCEC will see its staff boosted to 23 in the move, and will retain Lee Kwang-jae as its director.

Some critics question whether Lee is fully internationalized enough for the job, as the center is the key office for cooperation with foreign tax authorities, including the Internal Revenue Service of the United States.

The NTS said that Lee has shown an excellent performance since joining the NTS, and has no problem in communicating with foreign officials in English.

“His English is good enough to communicate with foreign investigators. He has also shown good work ethic and produced excellent results so far. That’s why we picked him over other candidates,” said Park Yun-joon, assistant commissioner for international taxation at the NTS.

Park said five applicants applied for the job and the human resources committee decided to hire Lee.

Under Lee, the temporary OCEC taskforce investigated four companies suspected of setting up secret funds in tax havens or illegally moving capital out of the country, according to the NTS.

As a result, it uncovered 622 billion won in unreported income and imposed over 339 billion won in punitive taxes on the four.

The former Samil PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) employee vowed to serve the country performing his duties diligently and honestly.

“I will do my utmost to carry out my work in a thorough and transparent manner,” said Lee.

Before joining the OCEC, Lee worked as head of the tax team at the local branch member of the international accounting company.

The 42-year-old joined the NTS first in March 1989 after graduating from the state-run National Tax College, and worked at the tax agency for 16 years until December 2005 when he moved to Samil PwC.

Lee’s appointment came after the NTS reinforced its international tax evasion investigation team. Commissioner Lee Hyun-dong vowed to collect 1 trillion won from offshore tax evasion cases this year at the agency’s general meeting in January.