Manufacturer Technology Handed Over Cricket Prosecution to China 950 Million Won in Penalty

Technical data from domestic suppliers handed over to Chinese competitors
Chinese Company Succeeds in Developing Sensors, Delivering to Crickets
Technical data on air conditioner parts are also handed over to domestic competitors.

[Anchor]
Crickets, which make boilers and air conditioners, handed over technical data, which is a lifeline to parts suppliers, to Chinese companies, and were investigated by prosecutors along with sanctions from the Fair Trade Commission.

It was to lower the delivery price by making the same parts.

Lee Seung-eun reports.

[Reporter]
Crickets Holdings handed over 32 technical data received from a local company that was supplying boiler sensors to a Chinese company from July 2020 to March of the following year.

The purpose is to dualize suppliers and lower delivery prices in internal documents.

Boiler sensors are key components that detect heating water, exhaust gas temperature, and flame wavelengths.

In the end, Chinese companies have succeeded in developing sensors and are currently filling half of their demand.

Crickets also succeeded in developing them by handing over technical data of suppliers, which are parts of air conditioners, to domestic competitors in May 2022.

Crickets received 46 technical materials from suppliers for 10 years from 2012, but did not give them a written request for technical materials that stated their purpose.

The Fair Trade Commission decided to impose a fine of 954 million won along with a corrective order and filed a complaint with the prosecution, judging that the cricket violated the subcontracting law that prohibits technology use.

[Kim Hong-geun / Director of the Fair Trade Commission's Technology Use Investigation Division: Many of these activities find low-cost companies, but we can't see it as a normal act to leak technical data of a business operator they are dealing with and ask other business operators to make the same thing....]

To protect the technology of small and medium-sized companies, the upper limit of the flat-rate penalty for the use of technology by subcontractors has doubled to 2 billion won since last year.

I'm YTN's Lee Seung Eun.


Video editing: Jung Kook-yoon
Design: Baek Seung-min
Screen source: Cricket Group homepage