The Korea Herald

지나쌤

Tax dodgers shamed online

By Korea Herald

Published : Dec. 12, 2011 - 21:00

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The capital on Monday revealed the names of thousands of tax dodgers online, including Joo Soo-do, former chairman of the multilevel marketing firm JU Group.

The names of 4,645 individuals and corporate bodies were posted online for failing to pay at least 30 million won ($26,190) each in local taxes over the past two years.

Available in PDF file format on Seoul Metropolitan Government’s homepage, the list contains 3,148 more names than last year, when the amount of unpaid taxes amounted to 100 million won.

The average amount of unpaid taxes per person was 150 million won while the total amount of arrears came in at 705 billion won.

A further breakdown showed that 3,160 individuals owed a total 400 billion won and 1,485 corporate bodies owed 304 billion won.

Joo’s JU Group was the corporate body that owed the highest amount at 17 billion won.

Joo, 55, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2007 for embezzling 1.84 trillion won from the company’s sales people.

The second-largest defaulter was JU Development, a real estate unit of JU Group, with 9.5 billion won.

According to the posting, 50-year-old Lee Nam-jong in Seongbuk-gu owed the most among individuals with 3.9 billion won.

By Robert Lee (robert@heraldcorp.com)