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Staff Reporter
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) is seeking the authority to monitor the e-mail of suspicious traders and to check their phone call history.
The regulator said Thursday that garnering such legal authority is one of its priorities this year in order to crack down on sophisticated criminals in the stock market.
``For now, our ability to examine suspicious traders is limited as we are not allowed to access their e-mail details or phone records,'' Ko Chan-tae of the FSS said.
``Suppose someone is spreading rumors online to manipulate stock prices. Currently, we can do nothing to find him or her on our own,'' he said.
Ko said that's why the FSS is jockeying to obtain the aforementioned rights, which are given to the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States.
``A growing number of company officials are using inside information to yield illegal profits, but such white-collar crime is not easy to deal with,'' Ko said.
``Accordingly, we need to check such people's e-mail or telephone history to secure evidence, which is otherwise difficult to obtain.''
Out of 96 financial crimes discovered by the FSS last year, 48, or 50 percent, were based on abuse of insider information.
The rate was just 35.8 percent in 2005 and has been on the rise since then, to 42.2 percent in 2006 and 47.1 percent in 2007.
Experts say it's long overdue for the FSS to beef up its investigative abilities ― the regulator has sought to get the rights to check e-mail and phone records for years.
However, there are obstacles ― two laws need to be revised; but more importantly, many civic groups are against the idea claiming privacy violation.
``To be frank, I think we need to enable the FSS to track suspects via inspecting e-mail or phone records to efficiently grapple with financial crimes,'' said a civic activist who declined to be named.
``However, my concern is that the agency may abuse or overuse the power. It will take some time for the FSS to gain such powers,'' he said.
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