From Referral to the Corruption Investigation Office to the Rejection of Cha Gyu-geun's Warrant... Investigation into 'Kim Hak-ui's Travel Ban' Comes to a Halt

Deputy Director Cha Gyu-geun of the Immigration and Foreign Policy Headquarters at the Ministry of Justice, who is suspected of issuing an 'illegal travel ban' against former Deputy Minister of Justice Kim Hak-ui, is responding to reporters' questions before entering the Suwon District Court building on the 5th to attend the pre-arrest detention hearing.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Seok-jin] The court dismissed the arrest warrant for Cha Gyu-geun, head of the Immigration and Foreign Policy Bureau of the Ministry of Justice, who is accused of approving the illegal 'emergency travel ban' on former Deputy Minister of Justice Kim Hak-ui, putting a brake on the prosecution's investigation.

It is somewhat fortunate for the prosecution that the court did not say there was 'insufficient evidence of criminal charges' or 'room for dispute over the establishment of charges,' but instead mentioned 'due process' and pointed out that 'the matter is not light.' However, with the cases involving key suspects such as Prosecutor Lee Gyu-won and Seoul Central District Prosecutor Lee Seong-yoon transferred to the High-ranking Officials' Crime Investigation Office (HOCI), and Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol resigning last week, the prosecution's investigative momentum is inevitably weakening.

According to the legal community on the 7th, HOCI Chief Kim Jin-wook is currently reviewing whether to investigate the cases involving the incumbent prosecutors Lee and Lee, which were transferred by the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office on the 3rd, or to re-transfer them back to the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office. Kim has stated that he will decide on the re-transfer within this week.

Previously, the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office transferred these cases to HOCI in accordance with Article 25, Paragraph 2 of the HOCI Act, which stipulates that if an investigative agency other than HOCI discovers allegations of high-ranking public officials' crimes involving prosecutors, the case must be transferred to HOCI.

However, since the personnel committee for selecting HOCI prosecutors has just been finalized, it is expected to take at least about a month before the personnel committee convenes, HOCI prosecutors are appointed, and a full-scale investigation can begin.

If the situation where the recommendation committee was stalled due to opposition from opposition party-appointed members during the HOCI chief candidate recommendation process recurs, the appointment timing of HOCI prosecutors could be further delayed.

Considering these practical circumstances, Chief Kim must choose whether to re-transfer the case to the prosecution or designate this case, which involves several pro-government figures including Deputy Minister of Justice Lee Yong-gu and Criminal Affairs Bureau Chief Lee Jong-geun of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, as HOCI's first case and investigate it directly.

The Suwon District Prosecutors' Office investigation team summoned Prosecutor Lee multiple times for questioning besides Bureau Chief Cha, but Prosecutor Lee Seong-yoon has not responded to summons and only submitted written answers. Given that both Prosecutor Lee and Prosecutor Lee emphasized before Prosecutor General Yoon's resignation that their cases should be transferred to HOCI, it appears that HOCI is considered more advantageous to handle the investigation under the judgment that the emergency travel ban on former Deputy Minister Kim was illegal. In fact, Chief Kim has previously made ambiguous remarks regarding the illegality of the emergency travel ban on former Deputy Minister Kim.

This differs from the prosecution's starting point, which assumes that Prosecutor Lee's document forgery and unauthorized access to travel records by Immigration Bureau staff were clearly illegal, focusing on proving the crimes of higher-ups who ordered or condoned these acts.

In March 2019, when public calls for reinvestigation were rising, former Deputy Minister Kim attempted to leave for Bangkok, Thailand, but was stopped from boarding the plane by an emergency travel ban imposed by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office's Past Affairs Investigation Team.

However, it was revealed through a public interest report to the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission that Prosecutor Lee, who was dispatched to the Past Affairs Investigation Team at the time, requested the emergency travel ban at Incheon Airport Immigration Office using a case number from a case that had been cleared years earlier, and that former Minister of Justice Park Sang-ki and then Deputy Chief of the Anti-Corruption and Violence Division Lee Seong-yoon were involved in the post-approval process.

The emergency travel ban request submitted by Prosecutor Lee included the case number (Central District Prosecutors' Office 2013 Criminal Case No. 65889) of a sexual assault case in which former Deputy Minister Kim was already cleared in 2013 at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office. Later, the emergency travel ban approval request submitted to the Ministry of Justice replaced this case number with an internal investigation number 'Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors' Office 2019 Internal Investigation No. 1.'

Since a case number from a cleared case cannot be used for an emergency travel ban request, and the 2019 Internal Investigation No. 1 at the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors' Office was only assigned two months later on May 30 for a completely different case, this was clearly a fabricated case number, revealing that all of this was document forgery carried out to prevent former Deputy Minister Kim from leaving the country.

Moreover, the emergency travel ban request and approval request bore only Prosecutor Lee's name without the official seal of the affiliated prosecutor's office chief. It is alleged that then Deputy Chief Lee Seong-yoon contacted the Seoul Eastern District Prosecutors' Office to request retroactive approval by entering the official internal investigation number, but was rejected. Prosecutor Lee Seong-yoon is also suspected of exerting pressure to halt the investigation after the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office Anyang Branch discovered these circumstances and attempted to investigate Prosecutor Lee.

Bureau Chief Cha is accused of receiving reports 177 times from March 19 morning to March 22 afternoon, 2019, through Ministry of Justice immigration officers, containing personal information such as former Deputy Minister Kim's name, date of birth, and immigration restriction information.

He is also accused of approving the detention request on the morning of March 23, despite knowing that Prosecutor Lee, dispatched to the Past Affairs Investigation Team, had illegally imposed the emergency detention on former Deputy Minister Kim.

Judge Oh Dae-seok, in charge of arrest warrants at the Suwon District Court, dismissed the arrest warrant for Bureau Chief Cha, who is charged with abuse of authority, obstruction of rights, forgery and use of false official documents, and dereliction of duty, during the warrant hearing held the day before.

Judge Oh stated the reason for dismissal as: "Considering the necessity of strict compliance with due process, although the matter is not light, based on the evidence collected so far and the suspect's attitude toward the investigation, it is difficult to judge that there is a risk of evidence destruction or flight, making it hard to recognize the necessity and appropriateness of detention."

This means that the necessity for detention is not recognized due to the absence of flight risk or evidence destruction, which are key criteria for arrest warrants, but it does not mean there is insufficient evidence or room for dispute over the charges.

In particular, Judge Oh's remark that "considering the necessity of strict compliance with due process, the matter is not light" can be interpreted as implying that if the charges against Bureau Chief Cha are proven, there would clearly be issues from the perspective of due process.

However, the problem lies in investigative momentum. With Prosecutor General Yoon resigning before his term ends, removing the shield against investigative pressure, it is difficult to continue a strong investigation into matters that the Blue House or Ministry of Justice consider unproblematic.

As lawyer Park Jun-young, who worked as a civilian investigator in the Supreme Prosecutors' Office Past Affairs Investigation Team in March 2019 and voluntarily resigned from the truth investigation team just before the problematic 'illegal detention' measure was taken, pointed out, former Deputy Minister Kim was not in a position to be subject to a travel ban at that time.

Regardless of how bad a person former Deputy Minister Kim was or how the prosecution used illegal or irregular methods to cover up the case during the investigation, if Ministry of Justice officials or prosecutors who enforce the law committed other illegal acts such as document forgery to prevent former Deputy Minister Kim from leaving the country, they should be punished. This is the essence of the current issue.

However, ruling party officials and Bureau Chief Cha, who appeared at the warrant hearing on the 5th, appeal to the public's negative feelings toward former Deputy Minister Kim by asking, "Then should we have just let former Deputy Minister Kim leave the country at that time?"

With the dismissal of the arrest warrant for Bureau Chief Cha, the first hurdle in the investigation, it has become difficult to speed up the investigation into higher-ups such as Prosecutor Lee Seong-yoon.

At the nationwide prosecutors' chiefs meeting convened by Deputy Prosecutor General Cho Nam-gwan, acting Prosecutor General, on the 8th, discussions are expected regarding investigations into cases related to the administration, including the former Deputy Minister Kim case and the 'Wolseong Nuclear Power Plant Economic Feasibility Evaluation Manipulation' case being investigated by the Daejeon District Prosecutors' Office.