Money-Smuggling to Overseas Runs over One Trillion Won This Year

The amount of foreign currency smuggling to overseas is found to have increased explosively since the second phase of free trade of foreign currency was adopted in January this year.

According to the report submitted by the Korea Customs Service to the Grand National Party lawmaker Shim Jae-Chul at the National Assembly`s Budget and Account Committee yesterday, the amount of illegal money-smuggling exposed from January through July amounted to 1,052,303,000,000 won (288 cases), thus exceeding one trillion won.

The amount of foreign currency smuggling to overseas has steadily shown a pace of rapid increases as it marked 33.2 billion won in 1997 (122 cases), 97,300 billion won in 1998 (63 cases), 680.7 billion won in 1999 (166 cases) and 881 billion in 2000 (233 cases).

Meanwhile, the amount of money smuggling from overseas increased from the last year`s 536.5 billion won to 936,163 million until July of this year, making an increase by two times. Thus the amount of total illegal money-smuggling both from and to overseas reaches near 2 trillion won.

In case of money-smuggling to overseas, pretensions of trading have covered 660.4 billion won, marking 62.8 percent. Especially, 11 out 22 firms that have smuggled foreign currency to overseas in pretension of trading since last year belong to the associates of the nation`s top-30 conglomerates.

Meanwhile, the Korea Customs Service revealed in the report submitted to the GNP lawmaker Ahn Taek-Soo at the National Assembly Finance and Economy Committee that illegal trades of foreign currency utilizing a no-tax zone were exposed at 14 firms (1,329 billion won), among which there were K Corp. (168.1 billion won) and S Industrial Co. (20.5 billion won) that belonged to the associates of 30 largest conglomerates of the nation.

Jeong-Hun Kim jnghn@donga.com