A former senior police officer sentenced to 10 years in prison in the first criminal case initiated by South Korea's Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials received a sharply reduced suspended sentence on appeal. Much of the core bribery charge was overturned, and the court ruled the agency had no authority to prosecute the private citizens indicted alongside him. The outcome of the agency's investigation and indictment in its first self-initiated case since its launch was thus substantially reversed on appeal.
The Seoul High Court's Criminal Division 3, presided over by Judge Lee Seung-han, on the 25th sentenced the former senior superintendent general, surnamed Kim, to one year in prison suspended for two years and ordered the forfeiture of 110 million won. Kim had been indicted on charges including bribery under the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes. The lower court had imposed 10 years in prison, a fine of 1.6 billion won and forfeiture of about 750 million won.
Kim was accused of receiving cash and goods worth 770 million won through credit cards and borrowed-name accounts between June 2020 and June 2023, after being asked by a clothing company head identified as A to intervene in an illegal funeral business and a criminal case.
The reduced sentence followed the reversal of bribery charges worth more than 600 million won that the lower court had found proven. The appeals court ruled the evidence was not sufficient to conclude that the accounts cited in the indictment were borrowed-name accounts effectively controlled by Kim. For the credit cards and electronics worth 110 million won that Kim received from A, the court upheld only a violation of the anti-graft law and cleared him of bribery, saying it was not proven that the money and goods were given in return for using his official position to broker favors.
The court dismissed the indictments against A and the other private citizens charged alongside Kim. It ruled that the anti-corruption agency has no authority to directly indict and prosecute ordinary citizens who are neither high-ranking officials themselves nor their family members. The ruling is expected to renew debate over the scope of the agency's powers, specifically how far it can directly indict ordinary citizens identified as accomplices in the course of investigating crimes involving high-ranking officials.
The agency said the ruling was hard to accept because it did not sufficiently reflect the nature of the offense, in which accepting a bribe and offering a bribe are necessarily linked as joint crimes. It added that it would closely review the written ruling before deciding whether to appeal to the Supreme Court.
