Chief Prosecutor Lee Seong-yoon Voluntarily Appears for Investigation on the 17th
[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Seok-jin] New materials related to the activities of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office Past Affairs Investigation Team (hereinafter the Investigation Team), which investigated the case of former Vice Minister of Justice Kim Hak-ui from 2018 to 2019, have been disclosed, bringing a new phase to the investigation of the Kim Hak-ui case.
As the recommendation for the next Prosecutor General candidate approaches, Lee Seong-yoon, the Chief Prosecutor of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, who is accused of exerting pressure to interfere with the investigation into Kim Hak-ui’s illegal deportation, voluntarily appeared at the prosecution for questioning, drawing attention to how this will affect future investigations and the selection of the Prosecutor General candidate.
On the 19th, the media revealed contents such as the 1,249-page “Final Report on the Case of Former Vice Minister Kim Hak-ui” and the “Interview Reports on Yoon Joong-chun and Park Kwan-chun” prepared by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office Investigation Team.
According to a report by Hankook Ilbo, the interview reports written by Prosecutor Lee Gyu-won, who was dispatched to the Supreme Prosecutors' Office Investigation Team at the time and met with construction broker Yoon Joong-chun and former Blue House Public Office Discipline Secretary Park Kwan-chun, contained allegations such as ▲entertainment rumors involving former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol ▲entertainment rumors involving former Daegu High Prosecutors' Office Chief Yoon Gap-geun ▲suspicions of investigative interference by the Blue House Civil Affairs Office, but much of the content was distorted, exaggerated, or amounted to unreliable hearsay.
There are also indications that Prosecutor Lee recorded questions as if they were answers. Additionally, these materials include content suggesting that during a meeting held just before the final report deadline, there was a sudden proposal to include matters related to the High-ranking Officials’ Crime Investigation Office (Public Officials Corruption Investigation Office, or POGO) in the recommendations, leading to disagreements among committee members. The materials also contain information that allows inference of the process by which POGO was explicitly mentioned in the final investigation and deliberation results prepared by Kim Yong-min, then the principal committee member (now a member of the Democratic Party).
It is pointed out that rather than investigating the originally scheduled suspicions, the Investigation Team’s activities were influenced by an intention to recommend reinvestigation of crimes such as bribery by former Vice Minister Kim, for which the statute of limitations had not expired, and to use this as grounds for the necessity of establishing POGO.
The materials were provided by lawyer Park Jun-young, who participated as a civilian investigator in Team 8 of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office Investigation Team that investigated the Kim Hak-ui case. Park had previously announced on his Facebook that he would disclose these materials through Hankook Ilbo and SBS to raise public awareness of the case.
He also stated that he provided the contents of the KakaoTalk group chat (group chat room) of the investigation team at the time to these media outlets. Park confessed, “The group chat of the investigation team contains ‘incompetence, irresponsibility, prejudice, etc.’ of people called experts, including myself. Most of the members, including ‘me’ who participated in the Kim Hak-ui investigation team, were shamefully irresponsible. We lacked the ability to analyze, organize, and handle the issues of a complex criminal case.”
In a Facebook post following the media coverage, Park said, “The problem is that regardless of the degree of distortion in the interview reports, the flimsy and legally ambiguous contents of the interview reports were released to the public as if confirmed by an authoritative organization. No one was able to stop the process of these contents being reproduced and amplified through media reports and prosecution reinvestigation. Even though the police, prosecution, courts, investigation team, and related parties all evaluated that Yoon’s statements could not be trusted.”
Currently, the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office is investigating allegations of “illegal deportation and investigative interference” against former Vice Minister Kim, while the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office is investigating Prosecutor Lee’s alleged “false preparation and leakage of the Yoon Joong-chun interview report.” The disclosure of the materials that formed the basis for the prosecution’s reinvestigation of former Vice Minister Kim is expected to have a considerable impact on these investigations.
Meanwhile, Lee, who is accused of exerting pressure to interfere with the investigation by the Anyang Branch of the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office, which sought to investigate him while serving as head of the Anti-Corruption Department at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office in 2019, appeared at the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office on the 17th for questioning.
Lee, who had ignored four summonses from the prosecution, reportedly contacted the Suwon District Prosecutors' Office on the 15th, after reports emerged that the investigation team had solidified a prosecution plan against him in consultation with the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, expressing his willingness to comply with the summons.
As the procedure for recommending the next Prosecutor General candidate is expected to proceed soon, it is anticipated that judicial processing of Lee will take place after the recommendation process is completed.
There remains a possibility that the Public Officials Corruption Investigation Office (POGO), which had deferred prosecution by transferring Lee’s case back to the prosecution, may request to re-transfer the case back to POGO.
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