Public officials in South Korea are increasingly choosing career opportunities in the cryptocurrency sector. Some of them come from financial authorities, which raises ethical questions, according to the conclusions of a Korean legislator, quoted by local media.
Former Financial Officers Hired By Major Korean Stock Exchanges
A growing number of officials in Seoul are vacating their government positions and moving into the crypto industry, according to Roh Woong-rae, a Korean member of parliament for the ruling Democratic Party. On Sunday, he called for the introduction of stricter rules regarding his employment after leaving public service.
Quoted by the Korea Herald, the legislator revealed that a grade 5 employee of the country’s top financial regulator, the Financial Services Commission (FSC), recently resigned from his position to join Bithumb, which is one of the major asset exchanges. digital in South Korea. .
Roh admitted that regulations now do not restrict that employment. At the same time, he believes that it is quite inappropriate for a former FSC official to directly join an encryption company overseen by the regulatory agency he has been working for.
Korean government officials are classified according to their seniority, with Grade 1 being the highest level. Currently, only civil servants grade 4 and above at FSC and the Financial Supervision Service (FSS), another major regulator, are required to undergo a job selection before landing a job in a private company.
According to the Public Service Ethics Law, government employees who exceed grade 4 cannot occupy a position in the private sector, when relevant to their previous job, for three years after the date they leave the body state. Korea’s antitrust watchdog, the Fair Trade Commission, reviews the employment status of all officials at the seventh grade level and above, Noh added.
However, the legislator criticized the public service ethics committee that makes the job selection for not thoroughly reviewing all cases. He gave an example with a high-ranking FSS official who had been responsible for the fintech space before finding a new job at Upbit, another large crypto exchange in South Korea.
Representative Roh Woong-rae noted that the ethics committee had not seen any problems with the measure. But in his opinion, it is difficult to understand the result of the selection, since the official had been involved in matters closely related to digital assets.
Such cases are not limited to financial regulators, the MP remarked. Furthermore, it revealed that a police officer from the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, who led a team investigating crypto-related crimes, is now also preparing to join Upbit. “Recruiting current and former FSC and police personnel, who are in charge of regulations, is highly unethical as they are more likely to serve as a shield than experts,” Roh commented.
Do you think the Korean authorities will tighten the rules for officials seeking employment at crypto companies? Let us know in the comment section below.
Image credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons