By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
Police detained ten executives and officials of Hewlett-Packard Korea on charges of receiving bribes from a sales agency in return for supplying goods at lower-than-market prices to the agency.
Police said Thursday that they have referred HP Korea's vice president, identified as Ham, and nine other former and incumbent officials of the company to the prosecution. Dozens of other company and government officials were also booked in connection with the bribery case. Sales agencies of HP Korea were found to have bribed not only HP Korea officials but also government and other corporate officials.
These HP officials are suspected of having received about 1.2 billion won in bribes from Zungwon Engineering and Systems, the nation's largest sales agency of HP, from 2003 until last June. HP Korea officials provided a discount to goods it supplies to Zungwon, police said.
Police also issued an arrest warrant for former CEO of Lotte Data Communication Co. identified as Kwon, 54, and the National Information & Credit Evaluation's former IT unit head, identified as Jung, 60, both of whom are still on the run. They are also suspected of having received bribes from Zungwon in return for buying goods from the distributor.
Eleven officials of Zungwon, 13 clients of HP including an executive of Meritz Securities and two public officials including former commissioner of Seoul's Regional Aviation Administration were also booked on charges of taking bribes and committing malfeasance in office.
``We are going to carry a though investigation going forward to stem bribery involving tech companies,'' police said in a statement. ``The latest case showed that even multinational companies are no exception in bribery cases.''
Zungwon Engineering officials will be prosecuted for embezzling nearly one billion won while pushing ahead with its mega project (worth 100 billion won) and bribing HP executives and government officials.
Taihan Electric Wire, BSInforcomm, the National Information & Credit Evaluation, LG CNS, Morning Communication, Narae Information & Communication and Daesung Electric were also involved in the bribery scandal.