Police sought an arrest warrant for independent lawmaker Kim Byung-kee after investigating a range of misconduct allegations against him for more than a year, but prosecutors returned the request within four days and demanded supplementary investigation. The rejection came little more than a week after police on the 3rd referred Hybe Chairman Bang Si-hyuk to prosecutors without detention over alleged fraudulent trading, following a 21-month investigation. With the launch of the new Major Crimes Investigation Agency approaching, police have now lost consecutive opportunities to demonstrate their investigative capacity in cases involving a sitting lawmaker and the head of a major entertainment company, fueling doubts about their capabilities.
The Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office on the 11th returned the arrest warrant request filed by the public crimes investigation unit of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's metropolitan investigation bureau and called for supplementary investigation, legal sources said on the 13th. Prosecutors said they concluded that the case for detention was insufficiently substantiated, citing the fact that the suspect complied with seven rounds of questioning and taking into account the roughly five months of investigative developments between the final questioning and the warrant request. The absence of any specific indication that Kim attempted to destroy evidence during those five months also factored into the decision, according to sources. In effect, prosecutors returned in four days a warrant request that police had built over more than a year.
Police had planned to refer all 13 allegations surrounding Kim at once, and selected from among them the charges they judged to carry the strongest case for detention, including concerns about evidence tampering. The warrant request cited allegations that Kim arranged a job at Jinwoo Sanjeon for his second son in return for favors related to his legislative activities and received about 67 million won in salary and tuition payments for his son at Soongsil University, in violation of the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes; that he turned a blind eye to independent lawmaker Kang Sun-woo's receipt of 100 million won in nomination money, constituting obstruction of business; and that he asked favorable questions at a parliamentary audit at the request of a senior official at Silla Leisure who was his former colleague at the National Intelligence Service, constituting bribery.
Police had expressed confidence that the warrant would be granted, saying they had devoted considerable effort to reviewing the legal grounds. Hong Seok-ki, head of the National Office of Investigation at the Korean National Police Agency, said at a regular press briefing on the 3rd that "the more important the case, the more often prosecutors may come back with requests for supplementary investigation, so we are examining even the smallest details," adding, "This is a case in which our capabilities are being assessed, so we are trying to raise the rigor and completeness of our work." An official at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency also said of the Kim case that "there were prior consultations with prosecutors on the direction of the investigation and on substantiating the charges, and we judge the likelihood of the warrant being sought to be high."
But critics say the time police spent proceeding cautiously ended up weakening the case for detention. After opening a full investigation into Kim in September last year, police summoned him for questioning seven times and conducted searches on multiple occasions. The warrant request, however, came five months after the final summons. The argument is that Kim's cooperation with the investigation during that period showed there was little risk of flight or destruction of evidence. Prosecutors, unlike in the early stages of the investigation, declined to accept the police argument that Kim should be detained now on the grounds of possible evidence tampering.
For police, who pressed on with efforts to substantiate the charges for more than a year amid criticism over delays and shoddy work, the outcome is a painful one. With less than a month before the new investigation agency launches, police had sought to prove their capabilities through the case of a sitting lawmaker who once served as the Democratic Party's floor leader, only to be blocked at the first hurdle of securing custody. The controversy over investigative capacity now compounds an urgent need to restore trust in the organization after a series of internal misconduct cases and inadequate responses, including the Jang Yun-gi case and the false closure of a missing-person report for Jang Mi-ran on Jeju Island.
A similar controversy erupted earlier in the case of Hybe Chairman Bang Si-hyuk. Police investigated Bang for 21 months over allegations that he deceived existing shareholders into selling their stakes during the initial public offering process and reaped about 263.1 billion won in illicit gains, but referred him to prosecutors without detention on the 3rd after two warrant requests were returned. Police and prosecutors also differed over which charges applied. Prosecutors viewed Bang's actions as individual conduct and examined the possibility of applying fraud charges, while police concluded that Hybe executives and private equity fund officials had concealed listing-related information from existing shareholders to gain profit under the shared goal of capturing listing gains, and applied charges of fraudulent trading under the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act.
The calculus for police has grown more complicated. Police plan to analyze the content of the prosecutors' request for supplementary investigation before deciding whether to seek a new arrest warrant for Kim. But because the core of the prosecutors' objection concerns the timing of the request, five months after the final questioning, and the absence of any confirmed sign of evidence tampering during that period, observers say those points will be difficult to address in a short time. Given that the investigation has already stretched beyond a year, some suggest police may refer Kim to prosecutors without detention.
Some also argue that the investigative strategy itself — insisting on referring all 13 allegations together rather than handling them separately — was a misstep. A lawyer who formerly served in the police said, "The fact that police failed to secure custody even after committing substantial investigative resources for a year is something that calls for a review of their strategy," adding, "If they cannot obtain decisive evidence or circumstances that would change the prosecutors' judgment within a short period, refiling the warrant request will realistically be difficult." He added, "It also needs to be examined whether the attempt to handle all 13 allegations at once prolonged the investigation and ultimately led them to miss the window for seeking a warrant."
