Two South Korean nationals have been indicted for their roles in a conspiracy to restrain trade and a scheme to defraud the United States in connection with operation and maintenance work for American military installations in South Korea by a federal grand jury in the Western District of Texas.
Hyun Ki Shin and Hyuk Jin Kwon were officers of a South Korean construction company that performed subcontract work on U.S. military installations in South Korea. Beginning at least as early as November 2018, Kwon and Shin, along with others, conspired to rig bids and fix prices for subcontract work and defrauded the U.S. Department of Defense in order to obtain millions of dollars in repair and maintenance subcontract work at U.S military installations in South Korea.
“Bid rigging, price-fixing and fraud are crimes,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division in a release. “We will not stand by as criminals engage in illegal conduct to harm our military installations overseas.”
Kwon was also a part-owner of the company, according to the release. The seven-count indictment charges Kwon and Shin with one count of conspiracy to restrain trade and six counts of wire fraud.
“By allegedly rigging bids with their competitors, the defendants cheated to obtain U.S. Army-funded repair and construction subcontracts,” said Special Agent-in-Charge Ray Park of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division’s Major Procurement Fraud Field Office-Pacific.
Related
The indictment is the first in an ongoing investigation into bid-rigging and price-fixing for operation and maintenance work for U.S. military installations in South Korea.
The maximum penalty for conspiracy to restrain trade under the Sherman Antitrust Act is 10 years of imprisonment and a fine of $1 million. For the wire fraud counts, Kwon and Shin face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.