Details of 27 convicted tax evaders are released

The National Tax Service on Thursday posted personal information of 27 people who have been convicted of tax evasion as well as an individual who falsified his report on personal holdings overseas.

The names included 39-year-old Chun Jong-chul and 52-year-old Kang In-tae who once owned a room salon, or hostess bar, in Gangnam, southern Seoul.

The details were revealed the day after the tax agency made the personal information of 2,226 tax evaders public. The difference with Wednesday’s list is that these are people who were convicted in court of intentionally evading taxes amounting to more than 500 million won ($64.5 million) since July 2012.

The means of evasion include falsifying their tax reports or destroying related books. According to NTS this is the second year that such a list has been made public, although last year only two names were disclosed.

Kang and Chun were sentenced a year ago by a Seoul court to four years in prison. Kang also received a 9 billion won fine and Chun was fined 14 billion won.

The two ran the Africa room salon in Gangnam, southern Seoul, since August 2010. A motel was located in the same building as the bar which had a daily average of 150 male customers who solicited sex until December 2012. In order to avoid taxation the waiters working at the bar encouraged customers to pay in cash. Earnings books were also destroyed to avoid withholding taxes made from money that the pair paid to female employees who were involved in prostitution. They were indicted in 2013 for dodging 13.6 billion won worth of taxes.

A 43-year-old businessman Park Jong-ho was the only person included on the list for failing to report a 12.2 billion won financial account he had overseas.

By law, anyone who has an offshore financial account exceeding 5 billion won needs to report it to the national tax agency. If caught for failure to do so they face heavy fines and could be criminally charged.

BY LEE HO-JEONG [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]