Police have launched an investigation into 14 employees of the Korea Land and Housing Corporation(LH) who are accused of speculative land purchases in two Gyeonggi Province cities recently named as development zones.
The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency announced on Wednesday that it launched the probes one day after receiving a complaint from a civic group named “Hwalbindan” against the 14 employees and their families.
In the complaint, the civic group accused the LH employees of purchasing ten lots of land in Gwangmyeong and Siheung for ten billion won between April 2018 and June 2020. The government had designated the two cities as sites for its "new city" development program last month, whereby it would build 70-thousand new homes.
The move comes hours after Lawyers for a Democratic Society raised suspicions against some 10 LH employees in a news conference. The lawyers' group said the LH staffers had purchased 23-thousand square meters of land in the two cities before the new-city designation.
Following the news conference, LH announced that 12 of the 14 employees in question currently work for the corporation while the remaining two are no longer employed. The corporation said it immediately removed the 12 employees from duty.