석유판매업자의 불법행위에 대한 처벌규정 검토

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a daily increasing rate of illegal acts by oil distributors including selling fake oil and not meeting the fixed quantity requirement. In response to them, the government has introduced and implemented a range of policies such as increased fines, a one-strike and you're out system, and rewards for reporting, only to see their illegal acts continue. This study thus set out to critically examine the old punishments for illegal acts by oil distributors, review criminal code-based punishments for them, and propose ways to secure the effectiveness of investigation including evidence gathering. The resulting plans are as follows:First, the study found that selling fake oil and not meeting the fixed quantity requirement by oil distributors are violations of the Oil Business Act and also frauds according to criminal law. That is, those illegal acts by oil distributors are violations of the Oil Business Act, and frauds. Given that relations between them form an imaginative competition, the serious fraud statutory punishment should be applied to those acts. Secondly, the Korea Institute of Petroleum Management, which is responsible for controlling illegal acts by oil distributors, has no judicial police power, which means that it cannot proceed with necessary criminal procedures including immediate evidence gathering even when it detects an illegal act. It is required to grant special judicial police power to the civil servants at the Petroleum Management Department under the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, which supervises the Korea Institute of Petroleum Management, or establish a regulation to make it compulsory to indict the offender for illegal acts to the judicial police upon detecting one. Finally, oil distributors do not shrink from those illegal acts because the profits from such illegal acts are greater than their fear of punishment for those illegal acts, which is weak. It is thus required to revise the current Proceeds of Crime Act and confiscate the profits generated by their illegal acts.