Police officer files complaint against prosecutor for allegedly suppressing probe


The revised Criminal Procedure Act is once again heating up the tension between the nation’s police and prosecutors.

This time, the two organizations are clashing over a complaint filed by a police officer against the prosecutor in charge of an investigation.

On Jan. 20, an inspector at Miryang Police Station filed a complaint to the National Police Agency regarding a prosecutor, who was in charge of a case he was investigating. In Korea, police investigations are controlled by the public prosecutors.

The allegation is that the prosecutor abused his authority to suppress the investigation into the CEO of a waste removal company after the accused hired a lawyer who had formerly served as the chief of a regional prosecutors’ office.

The police officer also claimed the prosecutor insulted and threatened him for objecting to his directives.

The case took on wider implications when the National Police Agency assigned the case to the division specializing in white-collar crime, to which the prosecutors’ office responded by ordering the case be deferred to a police station in the relevant jurisdiction.

However, a police station in the relevant jurisdiction is under the directions of the provincial prosecutors’ office, the office where the accused worked.

“The Miryang branch of the Changwon prosecutors’ office is where the accused prosecutor worked, and with the Changwon office having issued a press release denying all allegations, a fair investigation will not be possible,” a police officer said.

The prosecutors’ office, however, says that a case being investigated by the police station in the jurisdiction corresponding to the address of the plaintiff is the correct legal procedure.

The police do not appear likely to accept the directive to defer the case without a fight.

“A young member of our organization met with a member of another organization and came back insulted. How can it be that (the police) cannot prevent this, (my) Term is not long left but it will be put to a stop within the term,” National Police Agency Commissioner General Cho Hyun-oh said on Tuesday.

The tension between the two organizations has been seething since November when the Prime Minister’s Office drew up the presidential decree on the enforcement of the Criminal Procedure Act, which was revised in June.

Although the revised law gave law enforcers rights to open investigations without orders from prosecutors, the two organizations have been at odds over changes that would reduce the police’s ability to conduct investigations independently of the prosecutors’ office.

Under the presidential decree, all police investigations are conducted according to written directives issued by public prosecutors.

However, the police have the right to ask for new directives when deemed necessary.

The decree also gives the police the right to conduct investigations internally without orders from the public prosecutors, but the police are required to submit documents and evidence to the prosecutors after the related procedures are closed.

By Choi He-suk  (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)