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There was anger among prosecutors on Friday after a court refused arrest warrants for three former and incumbent Lone Star executives suspected of manipulating the stock price of Korea Exchange Bank Credit Card Services and ordered the release of eight people held in the Hyundai Motor scandal. In a show of protest against the decision, prosecutors resubmitted their application for warrants against the Lone Star executives without revisions, a first in Korean legal history.
Prosecutors say the number of arrest warrant refusals has rapidly increased since former Seoul High Court judge Cho Kwan-haeng was arrested in a corruption scandal in August and are asking their leadership to get tough. ¡°We can¡¯t accept the fact that the court refused the arrest warrants despite recognizing the charges against the executives,¡± said Chief Prosecutor Park Young-soo with the Supreme Prosecutors¡¯ Office¡¯s Central Investigation Bureau. ¡°That¡¯s why we submitted the same application for warrants again without revising it or adding evidence.¡±
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Prosecutor General Choung Sang-myoung (third from left) and other senior prosecutors leave a meeting at the Supreme Prosecutors¡¯ Office in Seocho-dong, Seoul on Friday.
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The decision to resubmit came in an emergency meeting called by Prosecutor General Choung Sang-myoung. The chief prosecutor said an increasing number of applications for warrants are rejected as courts interpret the conditions for arrest -- such as flight risk and fear of evidence destruction -- too narrowly, hampering investigations. According to him, the rejection rate for warrant applications from his bureau soared to 26.9 percent during the first nine months of the year, up from 9.1 percent last year. The figure was 9.9 percent in 2004 and 0 percent in 2003. The Special Investigation Bureau at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors¡¯ Office also saw the rejection rate increase from 11.1 percent last year to 21.4 percent until September this year.
¡°We had big difficulty investigating irregularities in the sale of Korea Exchange Bank because we were not given the go-ahead to arrest key suspects at the right time,¡± Park said. ¡°It¡¯s time to take a serious look at the practice where prosecutors must follow the court¡¯s decision on arrest warrants.¡± The Supreme Court earlier this year issued new guidelines for arrest warrants aimed at curbing what it said was a scattergun approach to the arrest of suspects.
Earlier, the Seoul Central District Court refused arrest warrants for Lone Star Advisors Korea head Yoo Hoe-won, Lone Star vice chairman Ellis Short and the U.S. private equity fund¡¯s legal advisor Michael Thompson for spreading false rumors about KEB¡¯s capital write-down to pull down the credit card unit¡¯s stock price to take over KEB on the cheap.
The court also released on bail former Finance Ministry official Byeon Yang-ho, former Korea Development Bank deputy governor Park Sang-bae and six others arrested for alleged involvement in irregularities in helping write-off debts of Hyundai Motor. It cited the imminent expiry of the period for which people can be held for investigation, and said their age, social status and health presented no flight risk or fear that they will destroy evidence seeing as the questioning of witnesses was nearly complete.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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