Dozens of Hyundai Motor factory workers booked over office-hour gambling

ULSAN, July 21 (Yonhap) -- Police said on Thursday they have booked dozens of employees of South Korea's top carmaker Hyundai Motor Co. and plans to arrest a few others over illegal multi-million dollar gambling conducted during regular office hours. The police actions came as Hyundai Motor's in-house auditing body found that 62 workers at the firm's factory in Ulsan, 414 kilometers south of Seoul, had participated in illegal gambling on the Internet. The auditor also caught 35 workers at another provincial plant betting on Internet games during office hours. The workers involved included 13 former and current labor union officials at the auto manufacturer. Ulsan Dongbu Police Station said it has booked 53 Ulsan factory workers without detention and will seek arrest warrants for four other employees at the same workplace on charges of habitual gambling. The remaining five workers were released without charges, it said. "We will apply to get arrest warrants for four employees today on charges of habitual gambling," a police official said. According to the police, the 57 Ulsan workers repeatedly placed bets on illegal Internet sports and horse racing games during office hours between January 2009 and May 2010 using PCs in a staff lounge within the factory. The average amount each of the four people gambled over the cited period came to 300 million won (US$284,171), according to the arrest warrant application, and one of them placed as many as 700 bets during the cited period, according to the regional police. The police said it is also hunting for operators of the illegal Internet gambling sites the staff frequented. "We decided to apply for arrest warrants for some of the staff since the money at stake is huge and we need to preemptively block widespread cyber gambling," another police official said. The other 35 employees caught gambling at another regional factory will be handled by another police station due to jurisdiction.