For the first time ever, Newstapa and civil organizations have verified budget data, including special activity expenses of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, which had been hidden for decades, revealing the true nature and suspected misuse of their special activity expenses. Further verification of special activity expenses data from 65 district prosecutors’ offices across the country is also ongoing.

Newstapa organized [a joint coverage team for the prosecution budget] with five other independent media and public broadcasts. This is the first time in Korea that a nationwide joint media team was organized to monitor a powerful institution.

In addition, Newstapa is to receive additional data on special activity expenses from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office on July 31. The data includes the prosecutors’ special activity expenses from October 2019 to April 2023. This opens a way to verify all the special activity expenses data for 20 months when President Yoon served as Prosecutor General.

Newstapa and three civil organizations (Sedojab, The Center for Freedom of Information and Transparent Society, Citizens’ Action Network) received more than 8,000 pages of special activity expenses from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office last June 23 and published reports on it for five consecutive weeks. It was a reminder that even the most powerful institution must disclose their budget data to the taxpaying sovereign as the subject to be under scrutiny and control.

The result of our first verification of the prosecutors’ office’s special activity expenses was a disaster. Special activity expenses data, which should have been retained for five years, were systematically destroyed, our tax money was ‘squandered,’ and their accounting management turned out to be ‘messed up.’ In addition, since September 2017, when the prosecutors’ office claimed to have improved their special activity expenses system, not a single receipt was left in special activity expenses data, and many ‘unsubstantiated’ expenditures were found. Suspicions of criminal offenses such as embezzlement, treasury loss, and violations of the Public Records Management Act and National Finance Law were raised. However, the Ministry of Justice and Prosecutors’ Office have not taken any measures as if nothing is wrong. This is why a national investigation and a special prosecutor are needed to clarify the illegal disposal and misuse of special activity expenses data committed by the core of the prosecutors’ office.

Newstapa and three civil organizations have decided to verify the special activity expenses used by prosecutors’ offices at all levels, not just the Supreme and Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, but also the High Prosecutors’ Office, District, and regional Prosecutors’ offices. It is because of the difficulty in fully verifying whether prosecutors have properly used their special activity expenses based on the data from only two prosecutors’ offices.

The reason behind this is the unique executive structure of prosecutors’ special activity expenses. The prosecutors’ office regularly distributed a portion of the special activity expenses, which were supposedly used for urgent, confidential investigations, to 65 prosecutors’ offices nationwide.

According to the data from May 2017 to September 2019, which Newstapa and civil organizations verified this time, the special activity expenses used by the prosecutors’ office was 29.2 billion won. We confirmed that 8.05 billion won of this amount was sent to 65 prosecutors’ offices nationwide. Thus, to find out how this 8 billion won of special activity expenses was spent, it is necessary to check the details of the special activity expenses of all 65 High, District and regional prosecutors’ offices nationwide.

On April 19, five days after the Supreme Court’s decision, Newstapa requested additional information disclosure with 65 prosecutors’ offices nationwide, excluding the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, whose disclosure had already been confirmed. As we submitted the information disclosure request form, we reported that a case for disclosure of the details on prosecutors’ special activity expenses was established for the first time and attached the judgments of the first to third courts in which Newstapa and civil organizations had won, requesting the budget data be disclosed in accordance with the judiciary’s decision.

On May 17, four weeks after our request, 65 prosecutors’ offices nationwide announced that they would disclose the detailed execution information and proof document of their budgets, including special activity expenses. The budget data to be disclosed by 65 prosecutors’ offices nationwide includes special activity expenses, specific business expenses, and business promotion expenses, each with its proof of expenditure, including execution statements, card receipts, and cash receipts. The disclosure period covers from January 2017 to April 2023.

On July 14, two months later, starting from Seoul High Prosecutors’ Office and Seoul West District Prosecutors’ Office, we received the budget data from 65 prosecutors’ offices across the country, including Seoul North District, Seoul East District, Busan District, Daegu District, Changwon District Prosecutors’ Offices. The receiving process was a series of arduous processes. Like the Supreme and Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, all prosecutors’ offices provided their budget data in the form of copies of paper instead of files. We had to repeat the process of scanning, entering, and verifying each document individually. All the offices used ink to cover the details of how they spent special activity expenses and erased the names on the receipts for business promotion expenses.

In some prosecutors’ offices, we found that special activity expense data from the same period as the Supreme and Central Prosecutors’ Offices had been discarded, but we were not provided with a clear explanation as to why.

In addition, some prosecutors’ offices used ink to erase parts of the receipts from their business promotion expenses. Newstapa refused to receive the data and demanded that they be released again in accordance with the court’s ruling. Erasing the sales records in the business promotion expenses receipts was a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision. The court ruled that “personal information including the list of attendees’ affiliations in meetings (held with business promotion expenses), card number, authorization number, or account number” may stay undisclosed, but all the other evidence of business promotion expenses must be disclosed.

Newstapa will travel across the country and receive the budget data of all 65 prosecutors’ offices by mid-August, making it possible to verify the budgets of all prosecutors’ organizations for the first time in history. To verify this nationwide prosecutors’ budget, Newstapa organized an ‘intermedia collaboration project’ with five media to verify and cover the prosecutors’ budgets together.

There are six participating media outlet organizations including Newstapa. A new independent media outlet ‘Newshada’ will verify the Incheon District Prosecutors’ Office, ‘Newsmin’ will cover Daegu Gyeongsangbuk-do District Prosecutors’ Office, ‘Busan MBC’ will verify the Busan District Prosecutors’ Office, ‘The Kyongnamdomin Ilbo’ will cover Gyeongsangnam-do, ‘Chungcheong Review’ will cover Chungcheongbuk-do, and Newstapa will cover Seoul and capital region, to verify the budget data of 65 prosecutors’ offices nationwide simultaneously.

This is the first time in Korea that a nationwide joint coverage team was organized to monitor the budget of prosecutors’ offices which are powerful institutions. The findings of the joint verification and coverage will be released soon.

In addition, on July 31, Newstapa will receive the data on special activity expenses executed by the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office from October 2019 to April 2023. As a result, we can verify the data on special activity expenses for 20 months (August 2019 ~ March 2021) of President Yoon’s time as Prosecutor General. The results of this verification will be released soon as well.

Newstapa and three civil organizations (Sedojab, The Center for Freedom of Information and Transparent Society, Citizens’ Action Network) have been working on [Prosecutors’ budget monitoring project] since November 2019, with 16,735 pages of prosecutors’ budget data, including special activity expenses after three years and five months of administrative proceedings. This is the second joint project on the budgets of powerful institutions following [Tax thieves in the National Assembly], which tracked more than 80 members of parliament who misused taxes for 6 years from 2017 to 2022 and returned more than 200 million won.