Accountant Indicted for Pocketing 200 Million Won in Tax Office Lobbying Scheme, Alongside Colluding Tax Official

An accountant who took hundreds of millions of won under the guise of lobbying National Tax Service officials to reduce tax burdens, along with a tax official who leaked confidential tax audit data to the accountant, have been handed over to trial.

The Major Crime Prosecution Division 1 of the Busan High Prosecutors' Office announced today (November 6) that it has indicted accountant A without detention on charges of violating the Attorney Act and offering bribes, and tax official B without detention on charges of accepting bribes after official acts and leaking official secrets.

Accountant A, a former head of a tax division at an accounting firm, is accused of receiving 100 million won in April 2021 under the pretext of lobbying National Tax Service officials to reduce tax assessments during a tax audit of a listed corporation in Busan.

Investigations showed that while A was in charge of responding to the corporation's tax audit and received hundreds of millions of won in service fees and contingency fees, A additionally took 100 million won in cash, claiming it was thanks to personal lobbying after the initial tax assessment of 6.7 billion won was ultimately reduced to 430 million won.

In September of the same year, A is also accused of receiving another 100 million won from an acquaintance facing gift tax issues due to billions of won in stock transactions, under the promise of resolving the tax audit through National Tax Service connections.

Investigations revealed that the acquaintance's gift tax, initially expected to exceed 1 billion won, was reduced to about 77 million won.

A is additionally charged with providing 2.34 million won worth of entertainment to tax official B on nine occasions from April 2021 to May of this year.

B, currently a chief investigator at a tax office in Seoul, was found to have formed a collusive relationship with A while working as an investigation team member at a regional tax office in 2021.

It was revealed that B referred to this relationship as a "sponsor relationship" and demanded that A cover dinner expenses for public officials.

Furthermore, in exchange for entertainment, B is accused of handing over suspicion analysis data of a tax audit target company under B's jurisdiction to A in June 2022, and leaking corporate tax filing details of a company that A was considering acquiring in April of this year.

An official from the Busan High Prosecutors' Office stated, "To recover the 200 million won pocketed by A under the pretext of lobbying, we have completed asset preservation measures for real estate owned by A located in Gangnam, Seoul."

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.