A month before the enforcement of the so-called 'Complete Inspection Act (Revised Prosecutor's Office Act, Criminal Procedure Act)', which reduced the scope of the prosecution's direct investigation, the government prepared a mechanism to expand the investigative power by amending the enforcement ordinance.



The scope of corruption crimes and economic crimes that the prosecution can directly investigate has been greatly expanded, and crimes that disrupt judicial order and crimes that require individual laws to accuse or request a prosecutor are classified as 'significant crimes' under the Prosecutor's Office Act. made it possible



The Ministry of Justice announced today (11th) that the amendment bill to the 'Regulations on the Scope of Investigation Started by Prosecutors' (Presidential Decree)' (Presidential Decree), based on these contents, will be notified of legislation by the 29th of this month.



When the Inspection and Completion Act is enforced, the crimes that prosecutors can directly initiate investigations will be changed from the current six major crimes (corruption, economy, public officials, elections, defense projects, and catastrophic crimes) to “significant crimes prescribed by Presidential Decree, such as corruption crimes and economic crimes.” is reduced to ".



However, the amendment to the Presidential Decree re-stipulates that some of the public officials and election crimes that have disappeared from the provisions of the Act can be investigated by the prosecution.



Among the crimes of public officials, 'abuse of power' and 'creation of false public documents' are typical types of corruption crimes along with bribery, and 'purchase and inducement of interest' and 'donation' among election crimes are representative types of plunder election. ' can be defined as



In addition, the amendment bill also stipulates that 'crimes related to the distribution of drugs' and 'organized crimes aimed at economic crimes such as gangs extorting ordinary people, corporate gangsters, and voice phishing' are classified as 'economic crimes'.



In addition to corruption and economic crimes, the amendment also designated “significant crimes” for crimes that disrupt judicial order and for which individual laws require prosecutors to accuse and request them from time to time, allowing the prosecution to directly investigate.



The crimes of false accusation and perjury were defined as 'crimes that violate the judicial order.'

The goal is to solve the problem of the current law, which cannot be investigated by prosecutors even if the police are found guilty of innocence in cases not sent by the police.



It also made it possible to investigate crimes for which a state agency had to request prosecution and investigation by a prosecutor.



The amendment also specifically stipulated the concept and scope of 'direct relevance', which was pointed out inappropriately in the legislative process.

It paved the way for prosecutors to continue investigating criminals, criminal facts, or related cases with common evidence.



The aim is to reinforce the ambiguity of the revised Prosecutor's Office Act, which allows only directly related crimes to be investigated for cases sent to the police, which account for the majority of cases.



However, the policy is to improve the prevention of abuse of investigative powers in accordance with the restrictions on separate investigations stipulated in the Criminal Procedure Act.



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The Ministry of Justice has also abolished the 'Enforcement Rules for the Scope of the Scope of the Investigation Started by Prosecutors', which divides the scope of investigations by rank and amount.



According to the current enforcement rules, the prosecution can only investigate bribery by public officials of level 4 or higher, in the case of illegal solicitation of 50 million won or more, and in the case of illegal import and export of strategic materials worth 5 billion won or more.



This amendment will apply if the investigation is initiated after the enforcement date of the revised Prosecutor's Office Act on the 10th of the following month.



The Ministry of Justice emphasized that there is no problem with the amendment, conscious of the criticism that the Moon Jae-in government's amended law is nullified by the amendment of the enforcement ordinance with the goal of 'reducing the total amount of investigation by the prosecution'.



(Photo = Yonhap News)