The special counsel team led by Lee Tae-han, which is investigating a ballot shortage during the June 3 local elections, has moved to widen its probe into whether allowances paid to current and former senior judges, including Supreme Court justices, were illegal. The effort was halted after a court rejected a search warrant. The team said the court denied the warrant for reasons that are hard to accept, even though the special counsel team had laid out specific grounds for criminal suspicion, and said it would refile the request.
According to legal sources on the 14th, Lee's team requested a search warrant on the 12th targeting the National Election Commission and other bodies, but the Seoul Central District Court rejected it on the same day as the request was reported.
The team has been investigating whether payments were illegal after determining that the National Election Commission had, since 2014, paid its chairman 2.9 million won a month and part-time commissioners 2.15 million won a month under categories including meeting attendance allowances, agenda review allowances and "fair election promotion activity expenses." The special counsel team, launched last month, identified the case on its own. It was not covered in the earlier joint investigation by prosecutors and police.
Because the activity expenses were paid over a span of 12 years, a number of current and former senior judges who served as chairman or part-time commissioners of the National Election Commission during that period could fall within the scope of the investigation. By convention, a Supreme Court justice serves as chairman of the commission, and some part-time commissioners are also former senior judges.
The court, however, rejected the warrant, saying the basic facts had already been established and that the suspects appeared to differ on the legal assessment of those facts. It added that the search appeared likely to cause considerable disruption to the commission's normal operations.
The special counsel team pushed back against the court's decision. The search was intended to quickly secure evidence needed to determine the facts surrounding the fair election promotion activity expenses paid to current and former senior judges, including Supreme Court justices, the team said.
The team said it had laid out specific grounds for criminal suspicion by combining facts confirmed through its investigation with materials obtained from the Board of Audit and Inspection, and had fully explained why the search was necessary.
The team said there have been recent cases in which courts rejected some search warrants for reasons that are hard to accept, and that it would press ahead with the investigation without wavering, including by refiling the warrant request.
The team is also expanding its investigation across the commission's overall operations, including the ballot shortage in the local elections, allegations that voting statistics were manipulated, overseas trips by officials that served little official purpose, irregular hiring and promotion favors, and favoritism in private contracts and suspected collusion with vendors.