Calculation of Party’s Support Funds Will be Wrong?

“It would be strange if the sum of incomes and expenses fit to each other.”

A high ranking official, who had been involved in finances of the Election Planning Committee for then-candidate Roh Moo-hyun during the presidential election last year, pointed out on November 18 while referring to the recent controversy on the missing amount of the party’s support funds in the account books.

“It is very common that when parties receive their support funds, they use them right away if there are any urgent issues to spend the money on without making entries in the account books every time. In the event of reporting to the National Election Commission later, the parties used to match the incomes to the necessary expenses,” said the official. “In such situation, it is rather natural that the accounting records are not correctly processed.”

In particular, regarding a suspicion that Rep. Chung Dae-chul of the Uri Party had not properly reported some portion of the support funds valued at 50 million won last year, which was donated by a sales agent of Good Morning City when Rep. Chung was working as an election planning leader for then-candidate Roh Moo-hyun, the official said, “If that belongs to a serious case, every lawmaker from both the ruling and the opposition party who were engaged in his party’s support funds should go to prison.”

He affirmed, “At least 30 percent of the actual income will be left out in the account book of a party.” He added that the situation these days is much more transparent than in the past when omissions were far higher than reported amounts.

Another key official who previously worked for the Election Planning Committee for then-candidate Roh said, “Rep. Lee Sang-soo who took charge of general affairs during the presidential campaign is the only person that may be aware of the entire details of the total incomes. There will probably be many cases in which Rep. Lee may not even remember every income and expense.” He explained that party would provide money at once, without checking the cases one by one, whenever its divisions called for funds by reporting, “Our division spent the money for this certain event.”

In particular, the usage of funds, which is far from the “official” expenses, cannot but be substituted as “unofficial” from the beginning of income intake, officials said.

A manager of a middle and small-sized company in Seoul, said, “My company contributed 200 million won to the Millennium Democratic Party last year but only received a 100 million won receipt,” stressing that leaving out some amount of support funds were originated by the necessity in politics. Therefore, in a bid to verify thorough details of corporate support funds, we need to investigate the entire size of the company’s secret money, and then continue to search for the size and the use of the funds which are offered to politicians, experts said.

Sung-Won Park swpark@donga.com