Active-duty police officers who took money from private detectives to leak and sell information on wanted suspects have been indicted.
On the 15th, the Suwon District Prosecutors Office Criminal Division 1 (Director General Kim Hee-young) said it had indicted Inspector A (47) of the Hwaseong Dongtan Police Station in Gyeonggi and Sergeant B (41) of a police station under the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency on charges including accepting a bribe after improper performance of duty and leaking official secrets.
Three private detectives who had transactions with them were also indicted on charges including offering bribes and violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes (brokerage bribery).
However, Inspector A and Sergeant B did not know each other, and the crimes are said to be separate cases.
Earlier, in June last year, Inspector A, at the request of private detective C, illegally searched the Criminal Justice Information System (KICS) for information on wanted suspects and passed it on for 1 million won.
The information then flowed through C to another detective, D, and even to the wanted suspect, and D is said to have received 15 million won from the suspect.
At first, police referred only Inspector A to prosecutors on the lesser charge of simple secret leakage without quid pro quo, but prosecutors, through supplemental investigations such as tracking bank accounts, identified the presence of private detectives including C and D.
The circumstances of the money transaction and the route of the information leak were also confirmed during the supplemental investigation.
Prosecutors also, by tracking the detectives' communications and transaction histories, detected indications of another crime by active-duty police officer Sergeant B.
Sergeant B is accused of running a detective office under a borrowed name and selling information on a fraud suspect wanted by police to D for 700,000 won. B allegedly took requests from detective E to repeatedly and without authorization look up personal information and even created a "price list" to sell it.
A prosecution official said, "We will continue to respond sternly to public office corruption and crimes of leaking investigative information through thorough supplemental investigations and judicial oversight."
Both Inspector A and Sergeant B are said to have been suspended from duty.