Interior ministry says cabinet approves major-crimes agency rules

The interior ministry said Tuesday the cabinet approved rules establishing the operating, organizational and staffing framework for the Major Crimes Investigation Agency, scheduled to open Oct. 2.

The measures were drafted to specify detailed standards for the agency's operations, organization, staffing and investigator personnel management under the law that established the agency on March 24.

The measures set procedures for choosing an agency chief and outside scrutiny of investigations. A committee must recommend at least three qualified candidates, and parties to cases may seek a review whose conclusions agency officials must give maximum consideration. Other investigative agencies must notify the new agency of serious crimes they detect, although small-scale fraud and extortion cases, crimes under the Corruption Investigation Office's jurisdiction and complaints with unclear allegations or an obvious lack of prosecutorial authority are excluded.

The agency will have six regional offices in Seoul, Suwon, Daejeon, Daegu, Busan and Gwangju that will conduct direct investigations. Its planned workforce is 2,874, including 2,567 investigators. Existing prosecutors and prosecution investigators who choose to transfer may be appointed without an examination.

It will create five joint-investigation divisions for voice phishing, financial crime, virtual-asset crime and drugs, and units for follow-up investigations of crimes involving socially vulnerable people.

“We will make the agency a specialized investigative body that thoroughly protects the public from livelihood crimes such as voice phishing, financial crime and virtual-asset crime, as well as crimes targeting socially vulnerable people, including child abuse and sex crimes,” Interior Minister Yoon Ho-jung said.

The ministry will next form the chief-nomination committee and move ahead with investigator appointments.