Bureaucrats Grab Power, Regulatory Staff Alleges

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Bureaucrats Grab Power, Regulatory Staff Alleges

(REGULATOR, from Page 1)

When the head of the commission, Lee Keun-young, briefed President Kim Dae-jung Thursday on the agency's plans for the year, including the reorganization, he was accompanied only by commissioners and the service's directors, all of whom are government employees. The private sector nonstanding commissioners were not represented.

This incident, observers say, is symbolic of the treatment that private sector officials are routinely afforded at the agency after only four years of its existence.

"At the center of the issue now is that government officials are unfairly and illegally trying to manipulate the agency to increase their power and reign over the private sector representatives," a government official familiar with the workings of the commission said.

The official said the 1997 law that established the Financial Supervisory Commission was improperly modified in 1999 when an article in the law that limited the powers of the secretariat was deleted. "Under the law, it was a simple administrative body designed to assist the commissioners' in their duties when the commission was established," the official said.

The commission staff has mushroomed and gained power to the point that the commissioners have been nearly turned into rubber stamps, the official complained.

It has become commonplace, he said, for the commissioners to be asked to sign papers at the weekly meeting.

Another government official familiar with the financial supervisory agency said, "Of course you should have well-meaning and capable public officials working on the commission to assist the commissioners, and it also makes sense that we can't have what is essentially a government function entrusted purely to private sector members. But if the commission gets bigger, and has more public servants, it will be a gross violation of the legal provision both in form and substance that says the commission consists of nine members."



by Chung Sun-gu

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