<Anchor> It



takes great courage to report public interest to report internal misconduct. There are a lot of people who lose their jobs while being looked down on, so there is even a compensation system in place. Here, there was a case in which an employee of a nursing hospital filed a whistleblower and recovered billions of won. Was the reporter properly compensated?



First, we covered reporters who reported that reporter Kim Min-jung felt betrayed.



<Reporter>



Mr. A, who worked as a general affairs manager at a nursing hospital in Incheon, was recognized as a public interest reporter by the ACRC in 2014.



Mr. A filed a whistleblower with 300 pages of data on illegal receipt of medical care benefits by the hospital director, rebates, and unqualified medical practice.



[Mr./Public Interest Reporter: The director of the hospital committed a lot of illegal acts and gave me instructions, and I put the brakes on it because he was trying to commit a bigger crime.] A



large-scale police investigation was carried out at the request of the ACRC, The head of the hospital and others were sentenced to imprisonment and fines.



Afterwards, the National Tax Service collected about 500 million won in evasion tax, and the National Pension Service also recovered about 3 billion won of money that the hospital took unfairly.



However, Mr. A did not receive compensation.



The National Tax Service gave the absurd reason that Mr. A did not directly report to the National Tax Service.



A police investigation began at the request of the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission, which received the report of Mr. A, and the police notified the result of the investigation and made additional collections. .



The National Pension Service, which recovered about 3 billion won, took issue with the timing of public interest reporting.



It means that the deadline for applying for compensation has passed two years after the refund decision was made.



However, when the application for compensation was made with nearly one year left before the deadline, the ACRC said:



[Corruption and Civil Rights Commissioner (May 2016): You can apply for compensation only after the lawsuit (filed by the head of the nursing hospital to the ACRC) is over. You have to wait until the lawsuit is over to apply for compensation.]



So Mr. A waited until the lawsuit was over.



However, when the lawsuit ended in 2019, the ACRC changed.



He said that the deadline for applying for compensation has already passed, saying that it will be based on 2015, the time when the refund decision was made.



[Mr A/Public whistleblower: I told you to wait, but 'because the date has passed, so you didn't apply at that time' (if you say you can't get it), this is betrayal. What should I believe and where should I report and who do I have to trust and wait?] The



ACRC said to SBS, "There may be debates about the deadline," but "The public service report was caught a few months ago by the Corporation." Even without it, it was possible to return it,” he said.



After a long fight, Mr. A received a reward of 100 million won from the National Tax Service, but eventually filed a lawsuit against the ACRC.



(Video coverage: Lee Yong-Yeon Lee Chan-soo, video editing: Hwang Ji-young)