By Lee Hyo-sik
The nation’s top prosecutor has caused a stir after handing out envelopes containing millions of won in cash to subordinates during a recent workshop.
The prosecution said it is a decades-old practice intended to financially help prosecutors perform their duties, stressing there is “nothing wrong” with it.
Civic groups argue that the practice has to be abolished and the way high-ranking government officials spend taxpayers’ money should be more transparent and subject to tighter scrutiny.
According to participants of the workshop, Prosecutor General Kim Joon-gyu gave 2 to 3 million won each to 45 senior prosecution officials, including heads of district prosecutors offices, totaling 98 million won ($90,000). The envelopes were handed out along with the workshop material.
Senior prosecutors gathered at the Legal Research & Training Institute in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, on April 2 to discuss countermeasures against a series of judiciary reform packages unveiled by the National Assembly.
Both governing and opposition lawmakers want to abolish a controversial central investigation unit at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, and prohibit retired judges and prosecutors from practicing as lawyers in legal cases handled by their previous workplaces.
The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office said the money was part of the Prosecutor General’s “special” business-related expenses. Kim is allowed to spend a total of 18.9 billion won in 2011 at his discretion in the name of “special” business-related activity expenditure. The prosecutor general is not obliged to verify where he spent the money.
Cheong Wa Dae, the Ministry of National Defense, the National Intelligence Service and other security-related state agencies are also allowed to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money in this manner.
Han Chan-sik, a spokesman for the prosecution, said it is a decades-old tradition for the prosecutor general to hand out part of his business activity expenses to heads of district prosecutors’ offices, adding the money is used to help investigators collect information on criminals and finance investigation-related activities.
Lee Jin-young, coordinator at People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, said the prosecution should abolish such an outdated practice immediately.
“Business-related funds allocated to Kim came from taxpayers in the first place. So, even though the prosecutor general is not required to verify where he spends the money by law, he should be more careful about how he does so and use it only for matters strictly related to the performance of his duties,” Lee said.
She went on to say that Kim should not have given cash to his subordinates because there is no guarantee that they would only spend it on work-related matters.
“The government should downscale the amount of taxpayers’ money used by state agencies at their discretion in order to make the government operate in a more transparent manner,” she said.
It was not the first time for the prosecutor general to be involved in a “cash envelope” scandal.
In November 2009 when Kim first met a group of journalists covering the prosecution, he gave eight reporters envelopes containing 500,000 won in cash each.
But when they found out that they were given money, some of them returned the envelope to the prosecution the next day, while others donated the money to a social welfare center.