SEOUL, Police have nabbed 1,620 individuals for illegally pocketing state subsidies worth 137.2 billion won (US$105.6 million) in total during a six-month special crackdown this year, officials said Wednesday.
The offenders, accounting for a total of 489 state subsidy fraud cases, were detected during the crackdown launched in June, with 24 of them under police custody, the National Police Agency said.
The number of cases marks a 31 percent increase from the same period last year, while the number of offenders grew by 94.7 percent year-on-year. The amount of illegally doled-out subsidies marks a fivefold growth from last year.
Of the total offenders, 632, or 39.9 percent, were nabbed for illegitimately pocketing subsidies intended for the disabled or other social welfare programs, followed by 430, or 26.5 percent, for subsidies on industrial technology and 202, or 12.5 percent, for agricultural and fisheries subsidies.
Of the total, 86.3 percent secured the subsidies by falsifying their subsidy applications for embezzlement.
In one of the cases, the head of a company and nine others were caught for falsely applying for and taking subsidies for youth employment worth 4.1 billion won, police officials said.
Source: Yonhap News Agency