Have domestic conglomerates become nicer?… Fair Trade Commission fines decreased by 90% compared to two years ago

It was found that the amount of fines received by large domestic companies from the Fair Trade Commission sharply decreased by one-tenth compared to two years ago.

According to a survey by the Corporate Data Research Institute CEO Score on the 24th of 236 companies among the top 500 companies in sales that disclosed their sanctions status over the past three years, the amount of sanctions received by large corporations from domestic and foreign regulatory authorities increased from KRW 930.2 billion in 2021 to KRW 466.5 billion in 2022 and KRW 466.5 billion in 2023. In 2018, it decreased to 224.8 billion won.

During the same period, the size of sanctions imposed by domestic regulatory authorities decreased to 752.7 billion won in 2021, 365.1 billion won in 2022, and 166.1 billion won in 2023. Sanctions from overseas regulatory authorities decreased to 177.4 billion won in 2021, 101.4 billion won in 2022, and 58.7 billion won in 2023.

The decrease in fines from the Fair Trade Commission was the largest, decreasing by about 90%. The amount of sanctions imposed by the Fair Trade Commission, which was 388.1 billion won in 2021, decreased to 235.1 billion won in 2022, followed by an 89.7% decrease to 40 billion won last year.

The cumulative amount of sanctions imposed by the Fair Trade Commission over the past three years was 663.2 billion won, accounting for the majority (51.7%) of the total domestic sanctions amount (1.284 trillion won). The cumulative amount of sanctions imposed by the National Tax Service and the Korea Customs Service over three years was 402.2 billion won (31.3%), and that of the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service was 110.8 billion won (8.6%).

CEO Score explained, “The ranking of sanctions by regulatory authorities is in line with the trend of appointing outside directors at large companies.” According to CEO Score, as of the end of October last year, 43.9% of outside directors who were bureaucrats at large domestic conglomerates were from the National Tax Service (21.3%), the Fair Trade Commission (11.1%), the Financial Supervisory Service (6.2%), and the Financial Services Commission (5.3%). done.

Last year, Shinhan Bank had the largest amount of sanctions by company at 33.6 billion won. This was followed by Youngone Trading (KRW 19.9 billion) and Hana Bank (KRW 19.6 billion). Shinhan Bank was regulated for violating mandatory anti-money laundering regulations for U.S. corporations, and Hana Bank was regulated for reasons such as poor sales.

Cumulatively over the past three years, Hyundai Steel had the largest amount of sanctions at 191.5 billion won. Of these, 177.6 billion won (92.7%) is the fine received from the Fair Trade Commission. In 2021, a fine of KRW 91 billion was imposed for the change in the standard price for purchasing steel scrap, agreement and execution of the timing, and a fine of KRW 86.6 billion was imposed for pre-distributing the winning bid volume and agreeing on the bidding price in the 2022 procurement service’s rebar bidding collusion.