Scientist's funds to be probed
2006-02-06 13:51
Seoul - South Korean state auditors said on Monday that cloning pioneer Hwang Woo-Suk would be referred to prosecutors over millions of dollars that have gone missing from the disgraced scientist's accounts.
Prosecutors are already probing Hwang for possible fraud in connection with his research funding.
The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) said in a report that Hwang had failed to account for 6.2bn won ($6.4m) in donations for his research - 1bn won in state funds and 5.2bn won in private donations.
Auditors said they would refer his case to the prosecution after concluding that Hwang kept millions of dollars in donations in his personal bank accounts of which more than $6m had simply disappeared.
Fall from grace
"There was no way to verify its use," said senior BAI official Park Eui-Myong, in reference to the missing part of the research fund.
"We are planning to refer all the data on what Hwang misappropriated or used for unclear purposes to the prosecution."
Hwang's team received a total of 37bn won in research funds over the past five years and spent 25bn won. Of that some 6.2bn won was spent in unaccounted ways.
Hwang, 52, was lionised as a national hero after he stunned medical experts in 2005, claiming to have created 11 patient-specific stem cell lines.
But his fall from grace came swiftly at the end of last year and has been gathering momentum since last month when a scientific verification panel found he had created no stem cells of any kind and that his research data was fabricated.
Staff 'forced' to give eggs
In a series of damaging revelations about Hwang, the National Bioethics Committee said last week he had lied about eggs from his junior researchers.
The committee said Hwang had forced two of his junior researchers to give eggs for his stem cell research, contrary to his earlier denials of forcing any of his staff to contribute eggs.
Prosecutors have questioned co-authors of Hwang's research, while the respected Unitd States journal Science has retracted his papers.
Prosecutors confirmed last month that Hwang never created stem cells tailored to individuals as he had claimed in a 2005 scientific paper.
Stem cells are master cells that have the potential to develop into any organ of the body. Scientists believe the cells can be used to fight a range of diseases including cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's.