Ssangyong Motor dismissed the allegation that the company sought to lay off a group of employees by rigging its financial statements in 2009.

In a statement on Friday, the automaker said financial regulators had already completed their probe into the allegation of fraudulent accounting, which had been raised by some lawmakers.

“The Financial Supervisory Service has also notified us that it has not found any critical misstatements in our accounting books,” a Ssangyong spokesman said.

He said the FSS conducted an extraordinary investigation on the carmaker and its auditor (accounting firm) between October 2011 and April 2012.

“If there had been any accounting rigging, the regulator could have filed a complaint against the prosecution,” he said.

In addition, a lawsuit filed by a group of former employees for similar rumors was also dismissed at a court in January 2012, the company said.

Some opposition lawmakers have argued that Ssangyong Motor fabricated its financial statements, or omitted its assets totaling 890 billion won in coordination with an accounting firm, in a bid to build up artificial factors to pave the way for full-fledged manpower restructuring.

Ssangyong had faced conflict between labor and management with its early 2009 push for mass layoffs in order to overcome financial difficulties.

After a protracted 77-day strike, labor and management managed a dramatic compromise in August that year.

By Kim Yon-se (kys@heraldcorp.com)