[Anchor]

A court has sentenced an accounting staff member in her first trial to 8 years in prison over allegations of embezzling tens of billions of won from an apartment complex in Gwangju. However, it has been confirmed that specific circumstances pointing to the embezzlement were already delivered to the police 5 years ago, but the allegations were not uncovered during the initial investigation.

Here is a report from KBC's Yang Hyu-chang.

[Reporter]

Back in 2020, Person A served as a tenant representative and auditor for the apartment complex.

While reviewing income and expenditure data at the time, Person A discovered a discrepancy of about 100 million won between the ledger and the actual bank account.

[Person A / Former Tenant Representative and Auditor in 2020: It was about 180 million won, but there was only 71 million won. They created two mismatched total balance sheet statements. So that is a 'double ledger.' One copy is for deception, and the other copy is kept correctly.]

Suspecting that the funds were not being spent properly, Person A even verified directly with the bank that the stamps on the utility bill receipts had been forged.

Person A even obtained a confirmation letter from the accounting staff at the time admitting to forging the bank stamps.

Based on this evidence, Person A filed a complaint against the accounting staff with the police, but claims that the police at the time pressured them to cancel the existing complaint, telling them to file it against the apartment management office director instead of the accounting staff.

[Person A / Former Tenant Representative and Auditor in 2020: How can they be police officers when they don't even investigate and oppressively tell you to write what they dictate? I wrote the complaint withdrawal as dictated because I was harassed so much.]

Although the investigation was reopened following Person A's objection, all charges against the accounting staff, including embezzlement, were dismissed without forwarding to prosecution.

Three years after the non-prosecution decision, the accounting staff fled with apartment management fee cash and was caught, ultimately receiving an 8-year prison sentence in a recent first trial.

In addition, the newly formed tenant representative council has filed an additional complaint, claiming there are circumstances pointing to an embezzlement of 44 billion won.

Because specific circumstances arousing suspicion of embezzlement were already handed over to the police 5 years ago, criticism is likely unavoidable that the damage could have been mitigated if the investigation at the time had been conducted properly.

(Video by Chang Chang-geon, KBC)

Yang Hyu-chang, KBC