Suspects have been raised that Cho Kyu-hong, a candidate for Minister of Health and Welfare, received more civil servant pension because he did not report his income after retirement.
According to the personnel hearing request submitted to the National Assembly, candidate Cho, who was the finance manager of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance in 2018, has served as a director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development since October of that year.
The European Reconstruction Bank is an international financial institution established in 1991. In Korea, a founding member, the directors and deputy directors rotate for three years each, and it is known that officials from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance are mainly responsible for it.
Candidate Cho, who became a former civil servant by submitting his resignation to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance to become a director, started receiving the civil servant pension immediately at the age of 51.
The amount confirmed in the candidate’s income proof document was 1.41 million won in 2018, and 16 million won every year in 2019, 2020, and 2021, totaling 5,118,600 won. .
This is only the ‘taxable subject’ of the pension received by the candidate, and there is a possibility that he received more pension.
For this reason, Democratic Party lawmaker Shin Hyun-young pointed out that the candidate may not have separately reported the income he received from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
According to Article 50 of the Civil Service Pension Act, if you have income other than a pension, you can pay up to half of the pension amount, but considering the minimum amount received is 50 million won, it is highly likely that the payment would have been made without a reduction.
Cho’s fortune, which stood at 1.1 billion won in 2018, increased significantly to 2.8 billion won in 2022, after serving as a director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
I sent a related inquiry yesterday afternoon to hear the candidate’s explanation on these allegations, but there has been no response until this morning.
Rep. Shin Hyun-young criticized, “It is difficult to understand how he nominated a candidate who had been tricked to receive a larger pension even though he was receiving billions of dollars in annual salary as a candidate for pension reform who had to bring about a great social compromise.”
He then demanded that the nomination be withdrawn, saying, “Cho candidate is not a suitable candidate for pension reform.”