By Park Si-soo
The prosecution has stopped its investigation into a corruption-ridden savings bank in an apparent protest against the parliament’s decision to abolish an elite investigative unit.
The bold decision at the height of the probe into the Busan Mutual Savings Bank came after a special parliamentary committee formed to overhaul the judiciary system said Friday its members had reached an agreement on abolishing the elite investigative unit.
The Central Investigation Department (CID), a key unit of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in Seoul, has played a leading role in investigating the bank.
Busan Mutual’s operations were suspended in February due to a liquidity crunch, freezing all financial transactions. Prosecutors have discovered that the bank cooked its accounting books and bribed politicians, high-ranking financial regulators and bureaucrats to keep the troubled bank afloat.
The controversial agreement at the National Assembly was reached at a time when the CID targeted some lawmakers in the ruling Grand National Party and opposition parties to question them over alleged bribery from the bank in exchange for helping it avoid state audits.
“The CID doesn’t work today as scheduled. This is the unit’s first time off-duty since the onset of the investigation on March 15,” senior prosecutor Woo Byeong-woo said Sunday. “We will resume working Monday.”
He said the suspension was not motivated by the parliamentary move.
Woo said Prosecutor General Kim Joon-gyu will convene an emergency meeting for high-ranking officials at the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office on Monday, and then issue a statement. He didn’t elaborate on what the statement would be about.
Another senior prosecutor said he was embarrassed by the parliamentary agreement.
“I’ve thought that the parliament had virtually dropped the talk about the CID abolishment,” the prosecutor said on condition of anonymity due to the issue’s sensitivity. “Personally, I was stunned because the agreement was made when we started to widen the probe into politicians embroiled in the corruption scandal.”
Due to the stoppage, the summons of Kim Jong-chang, a former governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, was delayed. His summons was scheduled for Sunday. The 63-year-old Kim is suspected of having overlooked the troubled bank’s financial illegalities and exercised influence to limit audits on banks affiliated with Busan Mutual.
“I cannot understand why politicians move to disband the CID at this moment,” said Kim Ok-joo, who represents depositors at Busan Mutual. Kim lashed out at the special committee’s members for hampering the investigation. “This is a grave negligence of their duty of protecting the basic rights of fellow citizens,” she said.
The CID abolishment was discussed at the National Assembly in April.
But a decision on the issue was delayed until June due to fierce opposition from prosecutors and politicians who claim its disbandment will leave law enforcement toothless in unearthing corrupt deals involving politicians, bureaucrats and tycoons that would otherwise go unnoticed due to political influence.
The CID has handled high-profile investigations into politicians, bureaucrats and tycoons.
Lawmakers supportive of the plan claimed the CID has been used as a tool to retaliate against political foes of President Lee Myung-bak and the ruling camp leaders, citing the nature of the prosecution controlled by the Ministry of Justice.