[Anchor]
We continue with allegations that Nominee for Minister of Justice Kim Seung-won lobbied the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Just two months after receiving clinical trial approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, Kang Se-chan, the founder of a new drug development company, attempted to secure 32 billion won in government subsidies related to the new drug. However, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, which was in charge of the review, rejected the application five times on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of actual efficacy. Then, how did it manage to pass the MFDS approval earlier?
Reporter Son Hyeong-an has the exclusive report.
[Reporter]
Kang Se-chan, founder of Genencell, a COVID-19 therapeutic development company, applied five times starting December 6, 2021, for a government-subsidized project through which the Ministry of Health and Welfare provided clinical trial cost support to COVID-19 therapeutic development companies.
This began 41 days after October 26 of the same year, when approval was granted by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety following a request made through businessman Yang to Nominee for Minister of Justice Kim Seung-won for a prompt process regarding the MFDS clinical trial plan approval for the new drug.
The total amount of funding applied for across the five attempts was 32 billion won.
This is the reason-for-non-selection statement obtained by SBS from the Korea Drug Development Fund under the Ministry of Health and Welfare regarding Genencell's clinical funding application.
The first application was rejected due to "insufficient evidence of mechanism of action and preclinical efficacy." From the second application through the fifth application in September 2022, all requests were denied with reasons such as "weak evidence of efficacy in animal testing" and "no significant preclinical efficacy data."
The Ministry of Health and Welfare's judgment that Genencell's COVID-19 treatment had a "low possibility of development" starkly contrasts with the decision of the MFDS, which had approved the clinical trial plan.
Considering Kang's funding applications to have been based on false reports, prosecutors indicted him on charges of attempted fraud in 2024. When meeting with SBS, Kang defended himself as follows:
[Kang Se-chan / Founder of Genencell: If you apply for a national project and get rejected because the data is insufficient, is that all fraud? Then all professors in our country are fraudsters?]
However, the first-instance court ruled him guilty, stating that it was a case of attempting to receive government funds using a research and development plan that contained false information and omitted side effects, though the attempt ended in failure.
[Han Ji-a / People Power Party Representative: The Ministry of Health and Welfare must clearly explain why the MFDS reached a different conclusion on matters that the Ministry deemed lacking in medicinal efficacy.]
Suspicion is growing over what grounds the MFDS used for approval, unlike the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
(Design: Lim Chan-hyuk, File Photo Provided by: Office of Representative Han Ji-a of the People Power Party)
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