External evaluators charged with taking tens of millions of won in bribes during the review of a service contract tendered by the Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH) have been definitively acquitted by the Supreme Court. The ruling holds that evidence collected without an additional warrant during a separate investigation into bid-rigging cannot be used to prove guilt.
According to the legal community on the 26th, the third division of the Supreme Court, with Justice Lee Heung-koo as the presiding judge, recently upheld a lower court's acquittal in the appeal of two people, identified as A and B, who had been indicted on charges of violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes (bribery) and accepting bribes.
A was indicted on charges of receiving a total of 70 million won while serving in January 2020 as a review committee member for a construction management service contract tendered by LH. Two companies that took part in the bidding allegedly asked A to help them be selected as the service provider. B, indicted alongside A, was accused of awarding a first-place score to a company that had paid 20 million won and a third-place score to a competitor while serving as a review committee member in January 2020.
The trial court sentenced A to three years in prison and a fine of 70 million won, and B to two years in prison and a fine of 20 million won.
The appeals court reached a different conclusion. It declined to recognize the admissibility of documents related to the bid review evaluation and of an audio recording, and found the defendants not guilty. The court held that the evidence had been unlawfully collected during a separate investigation. Its reasoning was that prosecutors, while executing a search-and-seizure warrant obtained on bid-rigging charges, had happened upon material analyzing the tendencies of LH's external evaluators and an audio recording containing circumstances of bribery, and had retained the items without a separate warrant. The court found this "an unlawful act that fundamentally undermined the warrant principle and the due process principle set out in the Constitution and the Criminal Procedure Act."
The Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision. It said the lower court had made "no error of misunderstanding the legal principles concerning unlawfully collected evidence and the admissibility of secondary evidence."
