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Before they were required to reveal the sizes of their assets to the public, 34 presidential secretaries were ordered by Cheong Wa Dae to erase their past mistakes by selling potentially controversial pieces of real estate and stocks, among other things. One high-ranking Cheong Wa Dae official acknowledged Wednesday that a guideline had been issued ahead of the public disclosure of personal assets telling presidential staff to look into the best methods to deal with records of real estate acquisitions or unpaid taxes.
Based on this guideline, one presidential secretary only last month paid his gift tax on a piece of land he had registered under his daughterĄ¯s name back in 2005. Another presidential secretary paid his gift tax this year on a large deposit he gave to his child last year. A few presidential secretaries who had been collecting rent on buildings or other properties they owned belatedly registered themselves as lessors, while two presidential secretaries recently sold W1.6 billion (US$1=W1,048) and W96 million worth of stocks each.
The Cabinet members of the Lee Myung-bak administration own an average of W3.3 billion in assets, while chief presidential secretaries owned an average of W3.5 billion and have earned the label of being a group of rich people from the affluent Gangnam district south of the Han River, or people who own lots of real estate. The Lee administration, which had two bad experiences already in the public disclosures of personal assets involving its people, may have been trying to minimize possible trouble this time. But it appears to be a clear intent to evade taxes if a presidential secretary did not pay taxes until recently, even though he gave a huge amount of money to his child. If another official collected rent without registering as a lessor, then he was evading taxes. If they had not become presidential secretaries, they would have continued avoiding gift taxes or registering. According to the law on public servantsĄ¯ ethics, government workers would have had to sell stocks they owned if they were found to be related to their work. But it is strange that they were made to sell off those stocks so suddenly.
The fundamental standard that should be applied in appointing public officials is to check whether there are any reasons that disqualify them, including problems in the way they amassed their wealth, and to weed out candidates with many flaws. Trying to hide the faults in the assets owned by presidential secretaries at this point means proper screening did not take place in the first place. Moreover, whitewashing and cleaning up the illegal and evasive actions of those secretaries amounts to deception of the public.
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