[단독] The electricity that budgeted 3.2 billion won for eco-friendly research

It has been confirmed that the Korea Electric Power Research Institute, a research and development (R&D) organization of KEPCO, was insolvent management and supervision in the process of pursuing a’decarbonization technology’ demonstration project.

The auditor’s investigation revealed negligent work conditions, such as evaluating companies with poor financial status to the extent that they were unable to properly pay their employees’ salaries, entrusting them to research, and paying them without properly verifying excessive project expenses.

Some point out that the government and public institutions should be more responsible for managing R&D projects. It is because the Moon Jae-in administration is pushing for a’Korean version of the New Deal’ that puts an astronomical fund of 160 trillion won by 2025, and blind money can go into the pockets of insolvent companies.

On the 14th, KEPCO and the Board of Audit and Inspection announced and announced the results of the audit, respectively, of’checking for corruption related to the development cost of commercial technology for next-generation carbon dioxide membranes’. In this audit conducted by the Special Investigation Bureau from April to June of last year, 6 cases of illegal and inappropriate matters were confirmed, including an excessive amount of R&D expenses of 3.15 billion won. The Board of Audit and Inspection requested the KEPCO president to censure the relevant persons, and asked the prosecution to investigate the allegations of fraud and the company’s R&D expenditure. In addition, it was notified to come up with a plan to recover 3.96 billion won, including unfairly paid research expenses.

KEPCO signed an agreement with Company A with related technologies in May 2016 with the goal of collecting, storing, and utilizing more than 90% of carbon dioxide contained in exhaust gas (gas emitted from facilities and facilities) by 2030. It invested about 18.7 billion won in R&D to start joint research to develop commercial technology for low-cost, high-efficiency separators.

However, according to the Board of Audit and Inspection, the project was full of insolvency from the stage of selecting a participating company. The Korea Electric Power Research Institute evaluated the financial status of Company A, which was unable to pay employees’ salaries due to capital erosion.

In addition, it was selected as a cooperative institution because of its high project performance capability without properly verifying the falsely stated technology and research personnel. Company A’s technical director, Mr. B, was unable to properly confirm that he had inflated the estimate with the representative of the relevant supplier. R&D expenses of 3.15 billion won were excessively calculated by reflecting the amount spent by the company.

The Korea Electric Power Research Institute was not able to catch any false information of the five employees who were in charge of administration and accounting as participating researchers. Their labor costs of 510 million won were taken as business expenses.

If such poor management is neglected, there is high concern that inadequate budget execution may occur in Korean New Deal projects such as the Green New Deal and Digital New Deal, which are spending enormous budgets. An official from a public research institute confessed, “As the investment budget has increased, many research projects have been ordered from the beginning of the year, but there is a great burden of making significant results.”

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[ⓒ 매일경제 & mk.co.kr, 무단전재 및 재배포 금지]