A jurisdiction dispute between the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials and prosecutors has led to a case in which only part of an alleged 1.58 billion won bribery scheme involving a senior Board of Audit and Inspection official is being punished.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office’s Criminal Division 5, led by Chief Prosecutor Jeong Jae-sin, said Tuesday it indicted a man identified only as Kim on charges including bribery and embezzlement under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes. He was indicted without detention.
Prosecutors said Kim effectively ran an electrical construction company set up under a borrowed name and is suspected of receiving about 1.58 billion won from construction firms subject to audits, disguised as subcontract payments and other fees.
Prosecutors brought to trial only the portion they said was clearly supported by evidence: about 290 million won in alleged bribes from 2018 to 2021. They said Kim received illicit payments three times from private companies in return for providing audit-related favors or introducing a public official who served as a bid evaluation committee member for a government-funded project. Three employees of private construction firms accused of paying bribes to Kim were also indicted.
Prosecutors declined to indict Kim over the remaining 1.29 billion won, saying evidence was insufficient.
The Board of Audit and Inspection asked the CIO in October 2021 to investigate the case. After two years of investigation, the CIO sought an arrest warrant for Kim in November 2023 on suspicion of bribery and other charges, but a court rejected it, citing insufficient substantiation of the allegations.
After the warrant was denied, the CIO questioned only some alleged bribe givers, then sent the case to prosecutors while requesting indictment. Prosecutors, citing the court’s reasoning, said supplemental investigation was needed and sent the case back to the CIO.
The CIO refused to accept it, saying the transfer had no legal basis, and the case returned to prosecutors. Prosecutors then sought search-and-seizure and communications warrants to pursue additional evidence, but the court rejected the requests, citing a lack of legal grounds to grant prosecutors authority to conduct further investigation in a CIO case.
Prosecutors ultimately indicted only the portion they said was sufficiently proven and closed the rest with a nonindictment decision.
A Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office official said institutional limits prevented prosecutors from requesting supplemental investigation by the CIO or conducting it themselves, making it difficult to quickly determine the full scope of the alleged wrongdoing. The official said it was the kind of outcome that can occur when the right to demand supplemental investigation is not supported by the system and prosecutors’ own supplemental investigative authority is not recognized.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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