Illustrative image: aerial view of tower cranes over a building construction site. — Illustrative image. Photo: Wikideas1, CC0

New Courthouse Build: Favourable Handling Included, Envelopes Sold Separately

Construction contract, one careful owner in a Busan court. Paid in cash, bus-terminal restroom pickup.

Sold2016Regional

₩62M≈ €41.8KAs stated in the source: 현금 6,200만 원

Already sold, in 2016. Nothing on Lobay is for sale.

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Seller

Role: head of the facilities division of a high court
Institution: High Court facilities division (anonymised in the judgment)
Place: Busan
Country: South Korea

Item specifics

Condition	Final conviction. Supreme Court dismissed the appeal, 16 Sep 2022
Location	Busan, South Korea
Seller	Head of the facilities division of a high court. Name withheld in the judgment.
Winning bidder	A construction company building a new courthouse (described, not named)
Category	Construction
Sold	2016
Payment method	Cash in envelopes, at a street, a bus-terminal restroom, a coffee shop and a pub room; plus entertainment
Returns	No returns. Official: 5 yrs prison, fine KRW 70,000,000; KRW 62,223,000 confiscated (2021)

Description

What the bribe bought

The Busan District Court found the builder expected a profit of approximately KRW 200,000,000 from the construction-method change the bribe helped push through. The court treated this as an expected profit, not a realised one.

Return on bribe: Every ₩1 of bribes earned about ₩3.23.Rough figure: the bribe is stated as “exact”, the gain as “approximately”.

What happened

In 2016 the CEO and a site manager of a company building a new courthouse paid cash to the head of a high court's facilities division in Busan. The court found they paid KRW 62,000,000 in cash, plus entertainment worth KRW 223,000. The favours included a change of the exterior-panel construction method and approval of advance payments. The Busan District Court sentenced the official to 5 years in prison and a fine of KRW 70,000,000. The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal on 16 September 2022.

Read the article

부산지방법원 2021. 10. 15. 선고 2020고합142 판결 (Busan District Court) · LBOX (judgment text) · Article in Korean

Official record

대법원 2022. 9. 16. 선고 2022도7108 판결 (Supreme Court) · CaseNote (judgment text) · Article in Korean

Shipping & returns

Authority	Kind	Amount	Year
Busan District Court (upheld on appeal and by the Supreme Court)	suspended prison sentence (builder's CEO)	징역 2년, 3년간 집행유예	2021
Busan District Court (upheld)	fine (site manager)	₩5M≈ €3.37KAs stated in the source: 벌금 5,000,000원	2021
Busan District Court (upheld)	prison and fine (official)	₩70M≈ €47.2KAs stated in the source: 징역 5년 및 벌금 70,000,000원	2021
Busan District Court (upheld)	confiscation from the official	₩62,223,000≈ €42KAs stated in the source: 62,223,000원을 추징한다	2021