Prosecutors on the 31st dismissed charges against lawmaker Lee Sung-yun of the Democratic Party of Korea and lawmaker Park Eun-jung of the Rebuilding Korea Party in connection with allegations that they conducted a so-called "pick-off audit" to force former Prosecutor General Yoon Suk-yeol to resign.
The Criminal Division 5 of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office (chief prosecutor Kim Ji-young) said that it dismissed charges including official secrets leakage against then-Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office chief Lee Sung-yun and then-Justice Ministry audit director Park Eun-jung in connection with the acquisition and use of audit materials on former Prosecutor General Yoon.
Earlier, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office received a complaint against the two in Dec. 2020 and, after investigating, dismissed the case on June 29, 2021. The Seoul High Prosecutors' Office then ordered the case reopened in June last year, and the investigation resumed. On this day, more than three years later, the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office dismissed the charges.
A prosecution official said, "We dismissed the charges based on the facts confirmed in related investigation and audit records and in the administrative litigation, as well as the Justice Ministry's audit regulations and related legal principles."
The two had been under investigation on suspicion of unlawfully obtaining and using audit materials during the tenure of Justice Minister Choo Mi-ae. Park also faced allegations of ordering deletions and revisions to a report concerning a prosecutor in the director's office at the time.
Specifically, the allegation was that, under the pretext of auditing Han Dong-hoon, then a research fellow at the Judicial Research and Training Institute and implicated in the "Channel A case" in Oct. 2020, they provided without authorization to the Justice Ministry's Audit Committee materials from the Justice Ministry and the Supreme Prosecutors' Office obtained for that audit, and used them as grounds to audit and seek disciplinary action against former Prosecutor General Yoon. At the time, the Justice Ministry's Audit Committee was auditing Yoon.
During the process, then–Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office chief Lee was also suspected of instructing former director Park to hand over investigation records, including call history. After that, former Minister Choo, based on the audit results, excluded Yoon, then the prosecutor general, from duties in Nov. 2020, prompting suspicions that this was a so-called "pick-off audit" targeting Yoon Suk-yeol.