Gov’t asks prosecution for probes into past renewable energy projects

The government asked the prosecution to investigate an additional 375 individuals for alleged involvement in illegal activities related for solar power and other renewable energy sources projects during the previous administration.

Park Ku-yeon, first deputy chief of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, speaks in a press briefing on the results of the second round of government investigations into irregularities in the past administration’s renewable energy projects on July 3 at the government complex in central Seoul. [NEWS1]

The government asked the prosecution to investigate an additional 375 individuals for alleged involvement in illegal activities related for solar power and other renewable energy sources projects during the previous administration.

The Office for Government Policy Coordination, under the Prime Minister's Secretariat, said Wednesday it had requested the Supreme Prosecutors' Office to investigate these individuals, involved in a total of 1,937 cases of alleged illegalities or mismanagement in projects supported by the electric power industry infrastructure fund during the Moon Jae-in government.

These individuals are accused of inflating tax invoices to secure illicit loans and faking documents to evade taxes, the office said.

This brings the total number of cases of irregularities and illegal activities which have been handed to prosecution to 3,828 cases, involving around 901 people, over the five years between 2018 and 2022.

The Moon government's solar power and renewable energy initiative received some 12 trillion won ($9 billion) from the infrastructure fund since 2018. The electric power industry infrastructure fund gets 3.7 percent of all electricity bills paid in Korea.

Since last year, the Office for Government Policy Coordination's anticorruption team and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy conducted two rounds of extensive probes into alleged irregularities in these renewable projects, including solar energy installations.

Through these investigations, the Yoon Suk Yeol government uncovered a total of 7,626 cases of alleged illegal activities and irregularities.

The office after its first and second rounds of probes estimated that government funds amounting to a total of some 68.04 billion won were misused for the renewable energy projects. The results of the first round were announced in September last year and the second in July.

The government said it has retrieved 30.86 billion won, or some 45.4 percent of the estimated total misused funds, through its task force for fund recovery efforts as of Monday.

This included 8.2 billion from power plant projects, 1.75 billion from financial support projects, 14.5 billion from research and development projects and 6.38 billion won in other sectors.

Some key cases, according to the office, were of financial support for projects that provided low-interest loans for costs such as installation and production of new and renewable energy facilities. There were 17 cases in which financial institutions retained the loaned funds without withdrawing the amount, and the full amount amounting to a total of 1.75 billion was refunded.

Another involved the recovery of 6.36 billion won from renewable microgrid construction projects installing hybrid generators to reduce pollutant emissions from diesel generators.

The office said it will continue to work to "recover subsidies and improve the system to prevent recurrences" to eradicate such illegal activities and irregularities in government projects.

It said it will "strive to create a healthy power generation industry environment by thoroughly recovering subsidies and improving the system to prevent recurrence."

Previously, President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered aides to carry out a thorough probe into the decision-makers behind allegedly corrupt renewable energy projects in the past administration.

BY SARAH KIM [kim.sarah@joongang.co.kr]