The Fair Trade Commission said Sunday that it fined conglomerates GS, Hanwha and Hanjin for illicit internal transactions that violated disclosure requirements.

The FTC detected 41 cases of violation at 24 of the three groups’ 171 subsidiaries and imposed combined fines of 586 million won ($552,300), the commission officials said.

The fine followed a probe recently conducted on the country’s top 10 privately owned business groups, which possess assets of 5 trillion won or more.

GS Group topped the list of violations with 25 cases in 13 subsidiaries, followed by Hanwha and Hanjin, with 11 and five cases, respectively.

Among the detected cases was GS Engineering & Construction, which purchased stocks from a group subsidiary without putting the issue to a directorate vote or making the due public announcement.

Most of the violations took place in unlisted companies, which tend to suffer from the lack of manpower and financial operation skills, FTC officials said.

(tellme@heraldcorp.com)