Suspicion over National Tax Service`s Systemic Involvement in the Election of the President of Liquor Business Organization

The National Tax Service (NTS) is arousing a suspicion that it might have been systemically involved in the election of the president of the liquor business organization to elect a former NTS person as the president. With the news that members of the organization requested to summon an extraordinary general meeting to dismiss the president and filed a lawsuit to the court, this incident is likely to create quite a stir.

According to the related business circle yesterday, presidents of the city and province associations under the Korea Liquor Wholesale Trade Central Organization (hereafter KLWT), which is a wholesale organization that sell liquor provided by the manufacturers, filed a lawsuit against the western district office of the Seoul Court on 20th, making a petition to "dismiss the president of the KLWT Lee Gae-Kwang, and to allow to hold an extraordinary general meeting to elect the successor."

They argued in the petition that "most members requested to summon the extraordinary general meeting three times, but the president Lee did not accede to grant our request."

Members of the KLWT, who filed the lawsuit, told the reporters that "the NTS suggested other candidates to withdraw or support the president Lee when the former NTS official Lee ran as a candidate for the president of the Seoul Liquor Wholesale Trade Association and the former Daehan Liquor Whole Sale Trade Central Organization in 1999."

Although the president Lee repeatedly failed in the election, members of the city and province associations selected Lee as the president of the KLWT in March last year, considering Lee`s connection with the NTS.

As this conflict culminated to a lawsuit, the NTS called in the presidents of the city and province wholesale trade associations and demanded that they should be reappointed first in order to dismiss the president Lee in the extraordinary general meeting, which should be held by the early next week, or they would resign altogether.

Members of the wholesale trade business said that some of the NTS officials indirectly pressured them to cancel the lawsuit saying "why did you engender this case, which should be managed by the NTS, into the court case?"

In response to this, a NTS official explained that the NTS "did not know about the lawsuit and did not pressure them to abandon the lawsuit. We only told them to end the internal feud either by standing together centering the president Lee or by forming new executives." This official also said, "Although we do not know the exact situation since Lee was elected when our predecessors worked in the NTS, it does not make sense that we promulgated for a former NTS official who resigned in 1970s." Meanwhile, the president Lee`s side said, "This incident took place due to an emotional reaction of some of presidents of the city and province associations, who think they have been ignored."

Kwang-Am Cheon higgledy@donga.com