Permanent Special Prosecutor Team for Kwan Bong-kwon and Coupang questions former Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office investigators as suspects

[Financial News] The Permanent Special Prosecutor Team for Kwan Bong-kwon and Coupang, led by Special Prosecutor Ahn Gwon-seob, has summoned former investigators from the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office for the first time.
According to legal sources on the 3rd, the special prosecutor’s team has been questioning investigators Kim Jeong-min and Nam Kyung-min, who previously worked in the seizure and evidence division of the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office, since this morning as suspects on charges of invalidating official documents and destroying evidence. The team plans to question them about how the banknote bundle bands went missing and related circumstances.
The allegation over the missing banknote bundle bands centers on claims that the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office, which was investigating suspicions involving Jeon Seong-bae, known as Geonjin Beopsa, before the launch of the special probe into First Lady Kim Keon-hee, lost the bands and stickers attached to 50 million won out of 165 million won in cash bundles it had secured.
These banknote bundles are categorized into newly issued notes, which the Bank of Korea (BOK) receives from the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation (KOMSCO), and circulated notes, which the BOK collects from commercial banks and deems fit for reuse. Photos taken at the time by the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office investigation team show that the sticker on the cash bundles found at Jeon’s residence was marked as circulated notes.
However, after losing the bands, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office failed to trace the source of the cash and handed the case over to Special Prosecutor Min Joong-ki’s team, which was investigating allegations related to First Lady Kim Keon-hee. At the time, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office explained that an employee had accidentally discarded the bands while counting the cash.
Recently, the special prosecutor’s team raided the Information and Communications Division of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office of the Republic of Korea (SPO) to obtain internal prosecution messenger records. It also executed a search warrant on a Gangnam annex of Shinhan Bank to verify how the bundled banknotes were received and processed. In addition, investigators were dispatched to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office and the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office to seize computers and other materials used at the time by members of the Seoul Southern District investigation team, and Prosecutor Choi Jae-hyun, who had handled the case there, was summoned and questioned as a suspect.
kyu0705@fnnews.com Kim Dong-gyu Reporter