Police 'Expanding'... Securing Leadership in Investigation System Reform?

[Financial News]  The police will significantly expand the national investigation organization and reinforce personnel from the second half of the year. Ostensibly, it is a measure to strengthen the response to civil crimes such as voice phishing, but there is also an interpretation that it is not unrelated to the discussion on the reorganization of the investigation system surrounding the abolition of the prosecution office.
According to the legal community and security officials on the 21st, the National Police Agency plans to newly assign more than 400 personnel to the investigation departments of city and provincial police agencies nationwide within this year.
In particular, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency's Metropolitan Investigation Unit will expand from 473 to 653 personnel, becoming comparable in size to the 'Prosecutor's Special Department'.
The Metropolitan Investigation Unit is a dedicated department that handles major financial crimes or corruption cases involving political and economic power figures. The Financial Crime Investigation Unit, which is currently handling major cases such as the capital market law violation allegations against Bang Si-hyuk, chairman of HYBE, and the proxy transaction allegations against independent lawmaker Lee Chun-seok, is also part of this organization.
More than half of the additional personnel will be assigned to the newly established Phishing Scam Investigation Unit, and the Financial Crime Investigation Unit will also see a significant increase in personnel.
The Gyeonggi Nambu Police Agency will establish a dedicated organization for phishing crimes under the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crime Investigation Unit and will recruit more than 70 personnel. The police explained that this is part of the 'Investigation Capability Enhancement Roadmap'. It is a reform aimed at effectively responding to multi-victim crimes such as voice phishing, leading room scams, and serious accidents at construction sites.
However, there is also an evaluation that this expansion of investigation infrastructure goes beyond simply responding to civil crimes. If the abolition of the prosecution office becomes a reality, a gap in large-scale and corruption investigations will be inevitable, and it is said that the police intend to proactively expand their territory before the newly established Serious Crime Investigation Agency is stably established.
Recently, the police's announcement that they first 'initiated an investigation' into the Lotte Card hacking incident, which affected 3 million victims, is also read in the same context.




425_sama@fnnews.com Choi Seung-han Reporter