Shinhan favored kids of execs and FSS staffers

Shinhan affiliates favored the children of company executives, lawmakers and even financial regulators in hiring, the Financial Supervisory Service announced on Friday.

The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) announced that it found a total of 22 cases where children of the connected were favored in the hiring process. The agency said it will refer the results to the prosecution.

The findings follow a highly-publicized recruiting scandal at Woori Bank last year, which brought down CEO Lee Kwang-goo. Of the affiliates, Shinhan Bank had the most cases with 12, all of which occurred in 2013.

Five of them were the children of executives of Shinhan’s financial affiliates, while seven of the applicants were recommended by high-ranking government officials and an official of the Financial Supervisory Service.

The FSS said that, in one case, one of the candidates in question received the lowest score on an interview session but eventually got the job.

At Shinhan Card, which had four cases, one applicant connected with an outside influential figure managed to land a position at the card company even though two different interviewers gave the candidate poor scores in 2017. The applicant was marked as having an “outside recommendation” in a list of candidates, according to the FSS.

Shinhan Life, the group’s life insurance unit, tampered with the scores on hiring documents for six candidates because they were the children of Shinhan executives.

Along with these specific cases, Shinhan Bank is also accused of setting an internal gender ratio that favored male applicants, even though the company didn’t make that clear in recruiting. It used a 7:3 ratio of men to women in the first candidate screening stage to hire more men.

BY PARK EUN-JEE [park.eunjee@joongang.co.kr]