The Financial Supervisory Service will learn investigative techniques for cracking down on illegal private lending—such as investigative procedures and how to operate IT systems—from special judicial police at local governments and from the national police. Regarding the special judicial police for livelihood-related financial crimes that it is working to establish, the Financial Supervisory Service plans to wrap up consultations with the Financial Services Commission and begin full-fledged work on building the organization.
According to the financial authorities on the 24th, the special judicial police task force (TF) for livelihood-related financial crimes, made up of five Financial Supervisory Service employees, plans to soon meet with local government and police officials to receive information needed to investigate illegal private lending. Among local governments, those that already have special judicial police for illegal private lending will be included. For example, the Gyeonggi Provincial Government has an in-house "Fairness Special Judicial Police Unit" that cracks down on and arrests illegal private lenders operating in the Gyeonggi region.
The Financial Supervisory Service is pushing to set up special judicial police for livelihood-related financial crimes to respond directly to illegal private lending. The special judicial police system grants a limited scope of investigative authority to administrative officials to investigate crimes in specialized fields. They cannot initiate investigations on their own and may investigate only under a prosecutor's direction.
The Financial Supervisory Service is consulting with the Financial Services Commission on the investigative scope of the special judicial police. It is discussing not introducing special judicial police in the areas of accounting oversight or inspections of financial companies.
The Financial Supervisory Service argues that, beyond granting authority to initiate investigations to capital market special judicial police and introducing special judicial police for livelihood-related financial crimes as previously pursued, its remit should be expanded to cover accounting oversight and inspections of financial companies. The Financial Services Commission believes it would be inappropriate for the Financial Supervisory Service, a non-governmental body, to have sweeping investigative powers over private corporations and financial firms, such as search and seizure, account tracing and freezes, and digital forensics.
Because legal revisions to establish the special judicial police have not been completed, the Financial Supervisory Service is, for now, structuring only the broad framework of its duties. To create the special judicial police for livelihood-related financial crimes, the Act on the Persons Performing the Duties of Judicial Police Officials and the Scope of Their Duties must be amended to provide the necessary legal grounds.
An official at the Financial Supervisory Service said, "We plan to review how special judicial police at other agencies are operated and apply what is needed internally."