Clean cards, dirty cards

Corporate credit cards of state-run companies are called “clean cards” and have a yin-yang symbol on the right and a trigram on the left. This is to urge employees to use such credit cards prudently because paying with them is using taxes. From 2005 to 2008, public organizations adopted clean cards and public servants are prohibited from using them at entertainment establishments or for personal use. If they use clean cards at nightclubs, a message reading “Transaction denied in this line of business” pops up on the screen of a credit card reader.

A survey conducted by the Commission on People’s Rights and Interests on the use of clean cards in 2009 found that such cards were used illegally. Certain state-run company staff sent letters to credit card companies to exclude golf courses and karaoke bars from the list of businesses where clean card transactions are banned. In 2009, employees of the National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives were caught using clean cards for 32 months to pay 900 million won (838,000 U.S. dollars) for entertainment. As such, corporate credit cards of state-run companies are not clean cards but “dirty” cards.

The Korea Water Resources Corp. set up a monitoring system for the use of corporate credit cards in January. A retrofitted audit program tracks down the illegal use of such cards by employees even on weekends and when they are on vacation. Golf courses and billiard halls have been included on the banned list and the number of businesses for which such card transactions are prohibited has increased from 20 to 32. Kim Se-jong, head of the management audit department at the state-run company said, “We retrieve corporate credit cards or mete out punishment if employees fail to give the reason for misuse of the cards, so employees and executives are on high alert.”

The monitoring system was adopted by several large state-run companies such as the Korea Electric Power Corp. and KoRail. The Commission on People’s Rights and Interests will introduce the system to all state-run organizations but the system cannot detect abuse if employees take receipts for restaurants or marts at entertainment establishments. Such irregularities continue as certain employees at state-run organizations turn a blind eye to internal corruption. The government must crack down on such corrupt practices via on-site monitoring. Equally important is the resolve of public company CEOs to help this cause.

Editorial Writer Hong Kwon-hee (konihong@donga.com)