Suwon Attorney Consultation | A Client Charged With Violating the Social Welfare Services Act Concluded the Matter With a Fine

The Social Welfare Services Act is a law that provides for the basic matters concerning social welfare services and guarantees the right of persons in need of social welfare to human dignity and a life worthy of a human being.

Its purpose is to enhance the professionalism of social welfare, to promote fairness, transparency, and propriety in social welfare services, to establish a system of community social welfare, and to raise the quality of social welfare services so as to contribute to the advancement of social welfare.

∙Social Welfare Services Act Article 23 (Property, etc.)

A corporation must obtain the permission of the Mayor/Do Governor with respect to its basic property in any of the following cases

1. If it intends to sell, donate, exchange, lease, provide as security, or change the use of the property

2. If it intends to borrow on a long-term basis (long-term loan) an amount not less than the amount prescribed by Ordinance of the Ministry of Health and Welfare for at least one year

∙Social Welfare Services Act Article 51 (Guidance and Supervision, etc.)

The Minister of Health and Welfare, a Mayor/Do Governor, or the head of a Si/Gun/Gu may guide and supervise a person who operates social welfare services with respect to the business under that person's jurisdiction and may, where necessary, order a report or the submission of relevant documents concerning that business, or have public officials under his or her control enter the office or facility of a social welfare corporation to conduct inspections or make inquiries.

The client was the representative director of the social welfare corporation in question, but the actual operation had been led by the non-indicted person, an in-house director.

At the city's first inspection, the non-indicted person underwent the inspection, and the non-indicted person also took the lead in submitting the relevant documents requested by the city official.

After the city's guidance and inspection commenced, the non-indicted person explained to the client, in effect, that all the relevant documents had been submitted and that there was no problem.

Because it was the non-indicted person who was leading the actual operation, the client had no reason to doubt the non-indicted person's word.

The non-indicted person did not inform the client at all of the fact that the city was continuously requesting the submission of materials or of the fact that the relevant materials had not been submitted.

Through the Suwon attorney consultation, the client emphasized that he had not participated in the actual operation of the corporation and had been entirely unaware that the non-indicted person had refused to provide the materials requested by the city.

As evidence of this, the Suwon attorney submitted text messages exchanged between the client and the non-indicted person.

Through the Suwon attorney consultation, the attorney argued that the disposal of the basic property and the submission of materials, which were the subject of the charges, were the business of the non-indicted person.

The non-indicted person was a director who was resident at the corporation and the person who most directly carried out the corporation's administrative affairs.

He was also the person who took the lead in the affairs relating to the disposal of the real estate that was the basic property.

Whenever there was a matter requiring budgeting or settlement of accounts as a social welfare institution, the non-indicted person handled the corporation's accounting affairs.

The Suwon attorney emphasized that the sending and receiving of official documents, an administrative task, fell within the non-indicted person's jurisdiction, and that the client was not involved in that business.