The city’s intense verification of the projects carried out by the late Mayor Park Won-soon continues every day. Major projects were subject to criminal prosecution, including prosecution, or were removed from the list of corrections. The budget has also been drastically cut, and the private companies in charge of the related projects continue to protest.
In the seven months since Mayor Oh Se-hoon took office, the city of Seoul has been conducting intensive verification work to see if there were any insolvency or preferential treatment in the projects carried out during the former mayor Park. Since taking office, Mayor Oh has been conducting extensive audits on the private consignment and subsidy projects that were promoted during Park’s tenure. In September, he criticized in a statement titled ‘The nail that blocks the city’s erection’, saying, “Because of the ‘nails’ put in by the former mayor, even if you try to change the wrong thing, you can’t change it.”
On the 3rd, the city of Seoul announced legal action against former Mayor Park’s ‘Veranda-type solar power facility supply project’. The Seoul Audit Committee said that 32 companies were found to have engaged in illegal activities, such as illegal subcontracting, and they filed a complaint and commissioned an investigation. This project is a structure in which citizens pay a small fee and install a mini solar power plant in their home through a private company, and the subsidy is paid to the city market company. The amount of subsidy received by these companies for illegal activities is about 3.1 billion won. 14 companies were found to have deliberately closed their businesses without complying with their obligations to inspect and manage veranda-type photovoltaic facilities for 5 years. In September, the city filed a complaint with the prosecution on charges of fraud and obstructing the execution of official duties by hierarchies. The 11 companies filed a complaint with the police on the 15th of last month on charges such as illegal rental of names, subcontracting, and unqualified construction. In addition, it was discovered that some companies violated the Local Subsidy Act by persuading citizens to install solar power facilities and receiving subsidies worth hundreds of thousands of won after paying their own deductible of 70,000 won.
Not only that, Mayor Oh removed the basis for promoting the solar power business. The city recently deleted the ‘One Less Nuclear Power Plant Plan and Promotion,’ which was the main task of the Environmental Policy Division of the Climate Environment Headquarters, while revising the enforcement rules related to the organizational structure. The solar power business was part of Park Jeon’s market policy to reduce the number of nuclear power plants by generating electricity for one nuclear power plant using new and renewable energy. The ‘One Less Nuclear Power Plant Information Center’ in Seosomun Government Complex 1 was also renamed the ‘Climate Energy Information Center’ to provide access to new and renewable energy information. This is not the only subject of criminal action. An audit related to ‘Nodeulseom Complex Cultural Space’ also led to accusations. The city said on the previous day that the cultural space operator had filed a complaint with the police on suspicion of embezzlement of 56 million won in private consignment project funds. It is alleged that there was a remaining amount of commission paid by the city, but did not return it and took it.
Auditors also received appreciation for ‘Village Community’, a grassroots community promotion project in the autonomous district of Seoul, ‘Platform Chang-dong 61’ to create a cultural space using containers in Chang-dong, Dobong-gu, and ‘Social Housing,’ which supplies public rental housing in cooperation with a private cooperative. is in progress All of these were implemented during Park’s tenure as Mayor.
Business funding has also been cut significantly. The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced the budget for next year on the 1st and announced that it had cut 83.2 billion won in the budget for subsidized projects entrusted to the private sector in relation to ‘making Seoul right’. Social economy project expenses Private consignment expenses decreased by 47.1%, and the subsidy for village ecosystem creation projects also shrank from 8 billion won to 1.2 billion won.
Mayor Oh is calling himself ‘making Seoul right’, but the opposition to this is not formidable. The ‘Civil Action Preparatory Committee for the Normalization of Seoul City Government, Se-Hoon Oh’, which consists of private consigned companies and civic groups related to the project, held a press conference in front of the Seoul City Hall in Jung-gu the day before and said, “(Mayor Oh) is indiscriminate only for his own political purpose. They are immersed in enemy targeting audits and sensational public opinion,” he criticized. Mayor Oh refuted this point on the 1st, saying, “I cannot agree with ‘erasing the former mayor’, denial of civic cooperation, or even ‘destroying democracy’ when he said he would correct the wrong practice.”
In the administrative audit of the Seoul City Council Administrative Autonomy Committee on that day, there was strong opposition from city councilors to the online education platform ‘Seoul Run’, a project emphasized by Mayor Oh. Rep. Kim Yong-seok pointed out, “The clause that guarantees a minimum profit for companies should be cancelled. Is it a Seoul version of Hwacheon Daeyoun?” He pointed out, “We need to be careful not to waste citizens’ blood tax, but it was designed too from the company’s point of view.”
[류영욱 기자]
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