Industrial Bank Admitted Its Fault on Loan of 400 Billion Won

Industrial Bank admitted its fault that it approved loan of 400 billion won to Hyundai Merchant Marine within 3 days after Hyundai Shipping’s applying.

However, Lee Kun-young, the president of Financial Supervisory Committee (FSC) & President of Industrial bank at that time commented “ if the loan to Hyundai Merchant Marine has been decided illegally and unreasonably, I will resign from the president position of FSC.

On the 9th, one of high-ranking officials of Industrial Bank said, “ It is a case to take one month to examine the approval” and added “ there might be lot of problems in a rough-and-ready process to decide the loan such as breaching regulations etc.

It conflicts with the fact that Park Sang-bae, Vice President who was a financial decision maker on loan spoke “the loan of 400 billion won is under discretion of director and it was performed normally without breaching any regulations”

A person concerned spoke “ from 14th, auditing will be performed by the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea (BAI). However, through internal auditing, we will censure the staffs concerned and disclose all the results” and added “ through auditing of BAI and investigation of Attorney General all truth will be found out, but we want to know the truth in advance”

After the disclose of the scandal of Hyundai Shipping’s transferring fund to North Korea, Industrial Bank began to internal auditing and completing by this weekend. Concerned documents will be submitted to BAI.

However. Lee President of FSC spoke at that day “during my term in office, the loan to Hyundai Merchant Marine was decided legally according to legitimate procidures” and added “I don’t cling to my post”

President Lee explained about Industrial Bank’s loan to Hyundai Merchant Marine even though Foreign Currency Bank was the main transaction bank of Hyundai “when I was in office, Foreign Currency bank was assessed for management, so it was difficult for the bank to loan to Hyundai, and only Industrial Bank was affordable to loan at that time”

About the opinion that investigation on bank account should be performed, He replied “ It was wrong that investigation on bank accounts was performed for secret fund of Daewoo and the investigation is not performed in this time” and added “ the investigation at that time was performed by Attorney General not by FSC” and rejected the possibility of investigation by FSC.

Kwu-Jin Lim Dong-Won Kim mhjh22@donga.com daviskim@donga.com