The Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) has confirmed that it will conduct an audit of the High-ranking Officials' Crime Investigation Unit (HOCI) in the second half of this year.
On the 1st, the BAI announced that its Audit Committee reviewed and approved the annual audit plan, which includes the schedule for auditing HOCI in the second half of this year. The audit plan prepared and reported by the BAI Secretariat must be approved by the Audit Committee to be finalized.
On the 30th of last month, the BAI Secretariat explained the reason for pursuing the audit, stating, "Recently, various sectors including the media and legal circles have evaluated that although three years have passed since HOCI's launch and its first term has ended, its functions and roles have not been properly established. We judged that it is necessary to assess this."
Previously, the BAI conducted an audit of HOCI in the second half of 2022 and announced the results in July of last year.
Some have expressed concerns that since BAI officials, including Chairman Choi Jae-hae and Secretary-General Yoo Byung-ho, are under investigation by HOCI over allegations of a targeted audit against former Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission Chairperson Jeon Hyun-hee, initiating an audit less than a year after the previous audit results were announced could raise questions about neutrality.
In response, a BAI official explained, "If audits are conducted on a two-year cycle, there will inevitably be about a one-year gap between the announcement of the previous audit results and the start of this audit," adding, "This is just a routine audit task."
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