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HWANG Woo-suk, the disgraced South Korean cloning scientist accused of faking his research results, may also have misspent government funds, South Korea's state auditor said last Monday.
The Board of Audit and Inspection said it would refer its findings from a three-week probe into Hwang's use of government and private funds to prosecutors, who are conducting a broad investigation into the scandal.
Through last year, Hwang received 30.9 billion won (US$31.8 million; euro26.37 million) in government funds for his research as well as 6.0 billion won (US$6.2 million; euro5.14 million) from private donations, the board said.
Of those funds, the board said it is unclear where 2.5 billion won (US$2.6 million; euro2.16 million) was spent.
It was not yet clear if Hwang would face misappropriation charges. Prosecutors were unreachable for comment.
The Ministry of Science and Technology of the government of the Republic of Korea said last Monday it will seek to retrieve state funds given to Hwang, if he is found to have misappropriated them.
"If the prosecutors' investigation finds any illegal activity such as misappropriation, we will order professor Hwang to repay that amount after due procedures," a ministry official said on condition of anonymity because he's not authorized to talk to media.
Separately, Hwang, professor of veterinary medicine at Seoul National University, was also found to have personally received an additional 3.4 billion won (US$3.5 million; euro2.9 million) in private donations, in breach of university regulations, the auditor said.
However, the board couldn't investigate how that money was spent because it was outside their authority.
"The government and companies provided professor Hwang Woo-suk with a lot of research funds," the board said in a statement. "But professor Hwang didn't follow appropriate accounting procedures."
The board questioned Hwang late last month.
Hwang, once hailed as a national hero and pioneer in the field of embryonic stem cells -- which scientists hope will help treat diseases such as Alzheimer's and diabetes -- was found last month to have fabricated landmark papers published in the international journal Science, according to a Seoul National University investigation.
Hwang has accused colleagues of deceiving him about results of his team's experiments, and also has alleged that some of the cloned embryonic stem cells at his lab had been switched without his knowledge.
Prosecutors have been looking into the scandal, raiding homes and offices of Hwang and his former co-workers and questioning them. Prosecutors haven't yet said when they will question Hwang himself.
Last month, a presidential aide resigned over the scandal. Park Ky-young, presidential secretary for science and technology affairs, was one of the co-authors of Hwang's 2004 paper where he claimed to create the world's first cloned human embryo and cull stem cells from it.
Park has been plagued by revelations that she received funds from Hwang when she was a biology professor.
She acknowledged accepting 250 million won (US$255,000) from Hwang, but claimed the money was purely for research purposes.
However, the state auditor said last Monday that Park has yet to turn in any paper for the studies the money was assigned for, more than a year after the research deadlines.
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