[Anchor]
The Korea Technology Finance Corporation has been providing carbon value evaluation guarantees, acting as a guarantor for bank loans to companies with greenhouse gas reduction technologies. However, it has been confirmed that due to flawed selection of target companies, tens of billions of won had to be paid back on their behalf.
This is an exclusive report by reporter Kim Kwan-jin.
[Reporter]
A vast vacant lot cleared out at the foot of a mountain. A wood pellet manufacturing plant—an eco-friendly fuel—should be here, but only weeds are growing.
Company A obtained a loan of about 5 billion won from a bank two years ago through the Korea Technology Finance Corporation's carbon value evaluation guarantee, claiming it would build a factory here.
However, the factory was never built, and the company was handed over to someone else just half a year later.
Selling the company under such circumstances required approval from the Korea Technology Finance Corporation, which acted as the guarantor, but this rule was ignored.
Although the Korea Technology Finance Corporation was aware of this fact, it took no action for seven months.
In the meantime, it was confirmed that the company's CEO received an additional 1.8 billion won in support from the Kibo through another company they operated.
[Company Official : We have about five or six factories, and as we kept robbing Peter to pay Paul, robbing Peter to pay Paul, it ended up like this....]
Ultimately, all of this money was written off as unrecoverable defaulted funds.
According to an audit of the Korea Technology Finance Corporation by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, the total amount written off as defaults since the related guarantee system was implemented in 2022 stands at 65 billion won.
Out of this amount, 54.7 billion won was found to have been paid back to banks by the Korea Technology Finance Corporation on behalf of the companies.
It was also confirmed that the screening process itself was inadequate; for guarantees exceeding 200 million won, an in-depth evaluation of their relevance to carbon reduction is required, but only routine document reviews were conducted.
Consequently, 9.7 billion won was provided to 57 companies unrelated to carbon-neutral technologies, such as plastic tableware manufacturers and online advertising agencies.
[Heo Jong-sik / National Assembly Committee on Trade, Industry, Energy, SMEs, and Startups (Democratic Party of Korea) : The verification was lax and they were overly focused on meeting performance targets. We will prepare institutional improvements to ensure support goes where it is truly needed.]
The Korea Technology Finance Corporation stated that the poor economic conditions contributed to the increase in guarantee default amounts, and that it would work on improving deficient areas.
(Video by : Kim Hyun-sang, Video Editing by : Kim Jong-mi, VJ : Kim Geon)
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