, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs reported on Tuesday. Private consumption rose 0.2% from the fourth quarter, driven mainly by housing and health care as well as banking services and insurance, the agency said. Consumption spending on food and clothing fell, the secretariat in places like Hong Kong and Singapore. Such outsourcing is illegal in Korea. "Such practices are part of the foreign banks' desire to manage their entire Asian portfolio," Kim said. "In cases of big investment banks, trading on a regional level can have a great impact on the domestic financial markets as such management can lead to sharp changes to the portfolios of the banks' local branches." The FSS plans to inspect 15 foreign banks operating in Korea every year to monitor their fund management from this year, citing the need to proactively manage potential market risks. "Foreign banking branches (in Korea) are considered to have a great effect in increasing the volatility of capital flows in and out of the market," the FSS said in a separate statement, adding such branches tend to take on short-term foreign currency borrowings to conduct derivatives or government bonds trading. Kim told reporters HSBC Holdings PLC and Credit Agricole S.A. have already been sanctioned for improper outsourcing of operations involving derivatives. He added that another European bank may be sanctioned fod costs taxpayers $60 billion a year, galling when Medicare faces insolvency. "When you look at the history of health care enforcement, we've seen a number of Fortune 500 companies that have been caught not once, not twice, but sometimes three times violating the trust of the American people, submitting false claims, paying kickbacks to doctors, marketing drugs which have not been tested for safety and efficacy," said Lewis Morris, chief counsel for the inspector general of the Health and Human Services Department. "To our way of thinking, the men and women in the corporate suite aren't getting it," Morris continued. "If writing a check for $200 million isn't enough to have a company change its ways, then maybe we have got to have the individuals who are responsible for this held accountable. The behavior of a company starts at the top." Lawyers who represent drug companies say the change has definitely caused a stir, but the end result is far from certain. "People are alarmed," said Brien O'Connor, a partner in the Boston office of Ropes & Gray. "They want to know what facts and circumstances would cause the Justice Department to indict someone who hadn't even known about the misconduct. They are doing all they can to achieve compliance." Others say high-powered corporate targets won't go meekly. "If the government does continue to press its campaign against individuals, we will see the limits of the government's theories tested," said Paul Kalb, who heads the health care group at the law firm of Sidley Austin in Washington. "In my mind, there is a very important open question as to whether individuals can be held criminally culpable or lose their jobs simply by virtue of their status." Although the Obama administration has increased scrutiny of corporate America generally, this shift in health care enforcement seems to have come up from the ranks, government and corporate attorneys say. Investigators and lawyers at the HHS inspector general's office, the Justice Department and the Food and Drug Administration started moving more or less independently toward holding executives accountable. Morris outlined the inspector general's position in congressional testimony this spring, saying his office will use its power judiciously. A test case is playing out with an 83-year-old drug company chief executive, Howard Solomon of New York City-based Forest Laboratories. Forest makes antidepressants, blood pressure drugs and other medications. Last month, the inspector general's office notified Forest that Solomon could potentially be banned from doing business with federal programs. The power to ban or "exclude" an individual rests with the inspector general. It's routinely applied to low-level violators, but rarely to people of Solomon's rank. In the industry, they call it the "death penalty." Last year, a Forest subsidiary pleaded guilty to criminal charges as part of a settlement with the Justice Department in which the company also agreed to pay $313 million to resolve long-running investigations. Prosecutors charged that Forest deliberately ignored an FDA warning to stop distributing an unapproved thyroid drug, promoted the use of