Smuggling Investigation

[Anchor Lead]

The Korea Customs Service is looking into smuggling and tax evasion allegations involving Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho and his family. In the course of the investigation it’s been discovered that the chairman did not have any record of spending money on his personal credit card overseas over the past five years. Does this mean that he used only cash?

[Pkg]

The Korea Customs Service first looked into personal credit card spending by Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho and his family over the past five years. After the probe, a Korea Customs Service official said that Chairman Cho made no purchases overseas over the past five years. He was excluded from a list of those to be summoned, as the lack of overseas credit card spending provides no evidence for allegations that he evaded customs duties. Cho has made more than 30 business trips overseas since 2014. But it is improbable that he spent no money abroad, given his frequent overseas trips. Regarding this abnormality, Korean Air employees are speaking out and providing tip-offs. An employee claimed that he had seen a credit card that was exclusively used by Cho's family, when he was accompanying the chairman during his visit. Another employee said that hotel charges and other expenses, even including water, were paid in advance with credit cards belonging to the chiefs of overseas branches and that this expenditure was settled directly by financial affairs teams at overseas regional headquarters. This is why there are some who say it is necessary to look into the details of spending made with corporate cards issued to Cho's family or the overseas branches of Korean Air. However, the Korea Customs Service says that it has no plan yet to investigate the airline company's corporate cards.