The Joint Investigation Group for Verification of Prosecution’s Budget (GyeongnamResidents Daily, Newsmin, Newstapa, Newshada, Busan MBC, and Chungcheong Review)discloses the original materials related to the special activity expenses received from 67district prosecutors’ offices throughout the country on the special page of “Opening theProsecution’s Safe.”

In Jun 2023, Newstapa and three civil organizations (Sedojab, Citizens’ Action Network, andthe Center for Freedom of Information and Transparent Society) released on the specialpage the materials related to the special activity expenses and business promotionexpenses from the 16,735-page original budget execution materials of the SupremeProsecutors’ Office and the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office.

From Jul 14 to Sep 1, 2023, the Joint Investigation Group for Verification of Prosecution’sBudget, consisting of five independent media and one public broadcasting company, visitedevery district prosecutors’ office nationwide to get the materials related to the prosecution’sbudget and analyzed them. As a result of the first-ever verification of the materials, manymisuses of budget and fraudulent uses of tax similar to those found in the SupremeProsecutors’ Office and the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office were identified. TheJoint Investigation Group will report the results of the verification of the budget executed bythe 67 prosecutors’ offices nationwide, starting with its first report, “Secret hamburgers andair purifiers paid with the prosecution’s special activity expenses,” on Sep 14, 2023.

In Jun, Newstapa confirmed that the records of the special activity expenses used by theSupreme Prosecutors’ Office and the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office before andafter the so-called “Case of Lee Young-ryeol’s special activity expenses money envelopdinner” were illegally discarded. The Joint Investigation Group verified all the materialsrelated to the special activity expenses budget received from 56 out of 67 districtprosecutors’ offices nationwide. As a result, it confirmed that 42 prosecutors’ offices had arbitrarily discarded their records for special activity expenses for the period from Jan to Aug2017. Although five prosecutors’ offices were preserving all the records from 2017, thematerials related to the special activity expenses were managed poorly, without a singlereceipt proving the expenditure.

The prosecution’s materials related to the expenditure of the special activity expenses areclassified into three types: the Record of Expenditure Details that lists the date and amountof special activity expenses executed every month in the form of tables to be approved bythe head of the agency, the Receipts and Confirmation of Execution which is prepared by theperson who receives the special activity expenses in cash, and a one-page document titledReceipt that is submitted by the person who used the special activity expenses with creditcard. Each document contains the date of receipt, recipient, amount, and reason forexecution.

The Joint Investigation Group has been releasing the materials related to the special activityexpenses received from 67 prosecutors’ offices throughout the county in consecutive orderssince Sep 14, 2023, on the special page of “Opening the Prosecution’s Safe.” The first batchof release includes 3,524 files amounting to 13.2GB. You can find the PDF files scannedfrom the original materials by selecting the year of different prosecutors’ offices.