Faced with sharp questions from the County Council, Montgomery County’s inspector general said that it took 17 months to release public information about a former high-ranking economic development executive who stole $7 million from the county because of an ongoing federal investigation.
Byung Il “Peter” Bang was fired as the chief operating officer of the county’s economic development department in June 12, 2017 and entered a guilty plea in federal court on Nov. 16 to embezzling $7 million over six years from county economic development accounts and depositing money in overseas banks.
At a Tuesday public review, council member Evan Glass (at-large) pointedly asked Inspector General Edward L. Blansitt III what caused the year-and-a-half-long delay in bringing the case to an end.
Blansitt said the county hoped a plea deal would have occurred sooner, but federal authorities continued to turn up information.
“As time went on, other issues came up, including the need for them to trace certain repayments to Korea, and that seemed to take an inordinately long time,” he said. “There was some thought in our mind that the $2 million to Korea may not have gone back to the Korean government, and so the criminal investigation pursued that lead.”
Deputy County Attorney John Markovs added that when authorities began investigating Bang in April 2017, the Montgomery County prosecutor’s office told county officials that Bang should stay in his job until a concurrent investigation for tax fraud had been completed.
Bang pleaded guilty in County Circuit Court to one count of wire fraud and one court of making a false statement on a tax return on the same day he pleaded guilty to the federal embezzlement charges.
“They [authorities] were working with Mr. Bang’s lawyer up until the plea deal,” Markovs said.
Glass also asked Blansitt about how many “off-book” accounts the county has due to a 1998 agreement that gave the economic development department the ability to accumulate funds that were to be used for the county’s incubator program in a way that was out of view of the public, the council and the county executive.
Blansitt said the economic development account was an “anomaly,” but that it was possible that similar agreements have been made.
“We have not reviewed thoroughly all of the county’s accounts. We’ve only looked at that specific issue. We haven’t looked to see if there are other pockets like that,” he said.
Glass said there are aspects of county government that are “screaming for oversight.”
“Here we are in Rockville evaluating a $46 million budget reduction, and today we’re discussing $7.2 million that was stolen from the county,” he said, referring to County Executive Marc Elrich’s mid-fiscal year savings plan that he submitted to the council last week.
Glass’s colleague, at-large council member Gabe Albornoz, said he is worried that budget cuts may lead to the elimination of many “middle management” positions that would have easily caught an embezzler such as Bang. A “clear assessment” of positions lost within county government due to retirements is needed, he said.
Dan Schere can be reached at Daniel.schere@moco360.media.
