Residents of rental apartment complex stage picket protest outside prosecutors' office
Residents of the Songbo Fineville rental apartment complex in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, who suffered property losses after a developer failed to repay housing fund loans during a pre-sale conversion process, urged prosecutors Tuesday to swiftly issue an arrest warrant against the rental developer facing fraud charges.
About 100 affected households held a press conference Tuesday afternoon outside the Suncheon branch of the Gwangju District Prosecutors' Office. They said a pre-warrant hearing for the suspect was imminent and that detaining the key suspect was necessary to prevent destruction of evidence and coordination of testimony.
Speaking at the press conference, the group said residents had paid their pre-sale prices in full, yet the developer failed to repay the housing fund loans. That left each household saddled with roughly 29 million won ($20,500) in debt, with liens still attached to their properties at the time of ownership transfer. "Residents are suffering losses through no fault of their own," they said.
They also called for a thorough investigation into where the pre-sale payments collected from residents had gone, why the funds were not used to repay the housing loans, what the developer's financial condition was at the time, and who made and carried out those decisions.
The residents further demanded an inquiry into whether the institutions responsible for overseeing the housing fund and the financial institutions that handled it had fulfilled their obligations, and whether any had turned a blind eye to the problem. They urged prosecutors to expand the investigation to include Korea Housing and Urban Guarantee Corporation (HUG) and Woori Bank, the fund's trustee bank, to determine whether there had been any illegal conduct, negligence or complicity in the supervision process.
Earlier, the South Jeolla Provincial Police Agency's wide-area investigation unit applied for arrest warrants against the head of Songbo Construction, identified only as A, and another rental developer representative, identified as B, on charges including fraud.
parkds@heraldcorp.com
