[Anchor]
Following our report on the wildfire cartel last May, the National Tax Service has launched tax investigations into wildfire restoration companies. It was revealed that they evaded 70 billion won in taxes by setting up dozens of ghost companies.
Reporter Jeong Seong-jin has the details.
[Reporter]
[SBS 8 News, May 4: There were forestry corporations that only traveled to wildfire sites across the country, secured business rights using ghost companies, and then disappeared.]
Following the SBS report, President Lee Jae-myung pointed out the issue of the "wildfire cartel," prompting the National Tax Service to analyze companies that participated in wildfire damage restoration projects over the past six years.
Among them, tax audits have been initiated into 10 companies where tax evasion suspicions were detected.
These entities utilized 41 ghost companies to participate in some 6,500 bids, successfully winning around 260 contracts worth a total of 230 billion won.
Because only local businesses are eligible to bid, one company relocated its business site 16 times over five years in a practice known as "locust bidding."
[Forestry Company Official: Bidding is a game of probability anyway. You set up five or six corporations and place bids. You move your address to enter the bids.]
It was also revealed that they processed hundreds of millions of won in license rental fees as salaries without actually hiring forestry technicians.
[Recruiting Company Official: You could say they almost never go to work. Non-regular staff simply means renting a license.]
Suspicions were also uncovered that the ghost companies exchanged false tax invoices among themselves to fabricate business performance records and disperse income, while also creating fake wage statements to write off billions of won in expenses.
They siphoned off money by putting family members as representatives of ghost companies to pay out salaries, purchased luxury watches with corporate credit cards, and a spouse with no notable income acquired real estate worth up to 2 billion won.
[Lee Sung-geun / Director General of the Investigation Bureau, National Tax Service: Since illegal bidding practices are accompanied by tax crimes such as the issuance and receipt of false tax invoices, if the requirements under the Punishment of Tax Evaders Act are met, they will be strictly punished...]
The amount suspected of being evaded totals 70 billion won.
Along with collecting the evaded taxes, the National Tax Service plans to investigate how the families of the company owners accumulated their wealth.
(Camera Journalist: Lee Jae-young, Video Editor: Lee Sang-min, Design: Park Tae-young)
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