Korea Criminal Act(KCA) Art. 315(Interference with Auction or Bidding) reads as follows: “A person who interferes with the impartial conduct of an auction or a bid through fraudulent means or by the threat of force or by other means, shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than two years or by a fine not exceeding seven million won.” So when a person(or a bidder) unlawfully manipulates computer programs of the agency calling for bids in order to obtain information about a minimum bidding price so that he can win the contract for sure. In the present case handed down by the Suprem Court of Korea, the defendants(bidder and manipulators) are found not guilty of Fraud by Use of Computer, etc(Art. 347-2 KCA) because a directness between a data processing and a property taking. The present paper agrees with the opinion of the Court, and moreover denies the violation of Fraud(Art. 347 KCA) in that the conduct does not make pecuniary loss to the agency. A bid-rigging is punishable by the Art. 315, and a violation of the Korean Anti-monopoly law and Construction law as well.
The purpose of this study is to analyse whether the capability assesment index to perform services as well as creditratings for the governmental procurement bidding influence earnings management behaviour using discretionary accrualsand real earnings management in the construction waste disposal industry. For this study, out of the 530 population(interimdisposal service companies for construction waste) across the country, the final sample of 144 companies is selected foran analysis period of six years, starting from 2008 to 2013. The modified Jones model (1995) is used to measure earningsmanagement and the Kothari et al. model (2005) reflecting return on total assets (ROA) is also applied to produce thediscretionary accruals. In addition, earnings management through real activities is measured by the model developed byRoychowdhury (2006) and the method developed by Cohen et al. (2008) is adopted to calculate the measurement ofintegration of real earnings management. Overall, our empirical results of the analysis show that the capability assessmentindex to perform services as well as credit ratings significantly influence earnings management behaviour in theconstruction waste disposal industry. First, the managers of companies having higher assessment index report increasedprofits through adjusting both discretionary accruals and real earings management. Second, the managers of speculativeenterprises which rank lower credit ratings use higher income-increasing discretionary accruals. These research findingsimply that the regulatory authorities should properly consider the earnings management behavior of the construction wastedisposal service industry in setting the qualification standards for the governmental procurement bidding. The usefulnessof this study results can be highlighted by alerting the industry managers that improper earnings management practicesnot only decrease the successful bidding chances of the companies involved but also deteriorate long-term firm valuesin the market.