The state audit agency made the conclusion after its three-week investigation over the allegation that Hwang embezzled funds gave to his team for research.

"The cloning expert has been given a total of 24.6 billion won(25.36 million U.S. dollars) in state and private research donations so far. It includes 18.6 billion won(19.1 million dollars) in government funds and 6 billion won(6.18 million dollars) in civilian funds," said the BAI in a report of its investigation.

However, among the total sum, only 16.4 billion won(16.9 million dollars) spent over the past five years were made under the scrutiny of the BAI.

Hwang is also suspected of having embezzled 2.5 billion won(2.57 million dollars) of the state funds and private donations, the BAI said in the report, adding it will send the materials over the embezzlement to the prosecution for further investigation.

The agency also pointed out Hwang managed most of the donated funds through his nine personal bank accounts, and there were some irregularities in the management.

Hwang was found transmitted 200 million won(206,000 dollars) state funds to his private accounts during April 2004 to April 2005.

Hwang also put 700 million won(721,649 dollars) of private donations received via a foundation into his time deposit account last year and withdrew them in cash later, it added.

He was also found not to report most of the private donations to the Seoul National University, where he served as professor. Hwang is required to receive the permission of the university before accepting or using private donations.

Moreover, some of the private donations were even used on 10 politicians and as spending of foreign professors visiting Hwang's research team, according to the auditors.

After the BAI announced its report on the investigation, South Korean prosecution vowed to investigate fully into the embezzlement charges over Hwang as it has now taken control of theaudit-related materials from the BAI.

The discredited professor and his team have been under investigation by South Korea's prosecutors over their fabrication on two papers since mid January.

The Ministry of Science and Technology also said it will confiscate any embezzled money that prosecutors turn up during their upcoming investigation.

The BAI's probe came after the Seoul National University concluded after investigation that Hwang fabricated facts in his two papers publicized by U.S.-based journal of Science in 2004 and 2005.

In the 2004 paper, Hwang's team claimed it for the first time cloned a human embryo, and extracted a stem cell line from it, while in the 2005 one it claimed it successfully cloned 11 patient-specific stem cells.

The U.S. journal retracted Hwang's papers after he publicly admitted that most of his research data had been falsified. Enditem｛