A suspension of execution was sentenced to officials of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy who were handed over to trial for obstructing the audit of the Board of Audit and Inspection by deleting data from the Wolseong Unit 1 nuclear power plant.
The 11th Criminal Division of the Daejeon District Court sentenced director A of the Ministry of Industry to 1 year in prison and 2 years of probation for charges of violating the Board of Audit and Inspection Act, damaging public electronic records, etc. Sentenced to 2 years probation.
Mr. A and Mr. B are accused of ordering the deletion of data related to Wolseong Unit 1 in November 2019, right before the Board of Audit and Inspection's request to submit data, or conniving or aiding in it.
In December of the same year, when a meeting was held with the auditor of the Board of Audit and Inspection, subordinate employee C entered the office of the Ministry of Industry of the Sejong Government Complex at around 11:00 the night before on Sunday and erased 530 materials related to Wolseong Unit 1 for about two hours.
At the trial, they argued that "the materials were deleted according to practice during the personnel transfer process, and there was no intention to interfere with the audit."
Regarding this, the judge said, "Even if they did not know about the forensics of the Board of Audit and Inspection, everyone knew that they were in a situation where they were being asked to submit data, and considering the fact that it took longer to delete the data related to the early closure of Wolseong Unit 1 than other data, it is difficult to admit it." and did not accept it.