President Lee Jae-myung targeted the recently exposed collusion among domestic oil refineries, stating, "We must firmly crack down on practices that exploit everyone's difficult times to engage in illegal profiteering."

President Lee, who is currently on a tour of three countries in the Americas including San Francisco, USA, and Brazil, presided over a meeting of senior secretaries and advisors via video link at 9 PM on the 26th (local time) from the Brazilian capital of Brasilia.

During the meeting, President Lee stated, "Investigation results have revealed that domestic refineries engaged in tens of trillions of won worth of collusion taking advantage of the recent Middle East war." He added, "I ask the relevant authorities to make every effort to crack down on market-disturbing acts so that hoarding and collusion do not occur not only with oil but also with other core livelihood items."

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office recently indicted four domestic oil refineries and their executives for significantly raising oil prices through collusion under the pretext of the war between the US and Iran.

Prosecutors stated that the scale of collusion between HD Hyundai Oilbank and SK Energy amounted to 14.2 trillion won. Considering that GS Caltex and S-Oil raised their oil prices by referencing the collusive prices of the two companies, a total of 26 trillion won worth of competition-restricting and collusive effects occurred.

In relation to this, it was also reported that chat messages were exchanged in a price-decision department chatroom of an oil refinery at the time, saying, "As expected, a company that lives off war, long live Trump" and "We are raising prices by another 100 won today. We'll probably make 2 trillion won this year," which sparked public outrage.

(Photo: Yonhap News)