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Kim Hwang-sik, the chairman of Board of Audit and Inspection, said Wednesday his agency will restore a missing list of people who are suspected of receiving rice subsidies even though they had never done any farming. The list was destroyed in August last year. The announcement signals a new stage in the scandal. The list is likely to be a veritable Pandora¡¯s Box of politicians, senior officials from the previous and incumbent administrations and prominent social figures who took money from the state for nominal farmland they owned but never farmed.
The list contains the names of 170,00 people who are under suspicion receiving rice subsidies between 2005 and 2006 but have no record of buying fertilizer or selling their crops to the National Agriculture Cooperatives Federation and are believed to be public servants, executives in the private sector, doctors and lawyers. The BAI said the list contains the names of some 40,000 public servants. The process of recreating the list is expected to take between two to three weeks, but if there is any delay, the BAI said it would come up with a list of the public servants first.
The problem is making the list public. Anyone on that list faces a public outcry, and the impact will be greater for government officials and politicians. That is why the BAI is reluctant to unveil the list. But lawmakers and farmers¡¯ groups will do anything to reveal it. No matter what happens, it looks like the list will be the next political hot potato in Korea.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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