공수처, 어떻게 운영되어야 하나? - 공수처의 운영방향에 관한 제언 -

Abstract

This article deals with how the Corruption Investigation Office For High-ranking Officials’(hereinafter, “CIO”) should be operated under the current law. The “Act on the Establishment and Operation of the Corruption Investigation Office For High-ranking Officials’” (hereinafter, “CIO Act”), which was promulgated in January 2020, for establishing a new investigative body against the corruption of high-ranking public officials. The introduction of CIO has been criticized on the ground that CIO is a redundant organization in criminal justice system (so-called the theory of “house over house”[屋上屋]) alleging its unrestricted and uncontrolled power. However, this denunciation seems excessive and unfair on close examination of CIO Act. This act is mainly focusing on the investigation of the corruption cases of high-ranking public officials (“Anti-Corruption Model”) and its authority to prosecute is so limited as only to the prosecution of prosecutors, judges and high-ranking police officers. In addition, the CIO is so small-scale organization that is made up of only with 25 prosecutors, including its head officer. Now that the CIO Act was originally designed on the principle of checks and balances as an independent investigation organization parallel with the Prosecutor’s Office (“Checks-and-Balances Model”). The stance of CIO Act is not satisfactory in view of the original intention and history of legislation, as result of the political comprise. Thus it is desirable for CIO Act to be developed from the Anti-Corruption Model to the Checks-and-Balances Model for the political impartiality of prosecutions. At present, the CIO is about to be built under the current law and supposed to be operated effectively to hold the Prosecutor’s Office in check as a way of the reform of the prosecution. So it is needed to develop rules and regulations of CIO for its effective operations in criminal justice system. In this vein, this article makes several suggestions, such as the introduction of the committee of the investigative bodies, the control over the Prosecutor’s Office in the competence to prosecute, long-term employment of its prosecutors and investigators, the procedural transparency and confidentiality in treatment of information about high-ranking public officials, and so on. Among them it is most essential to build the committee of the investigative bodies under the initiative of CIO, because it could coordinate effectively the whole process of investigations and prosecutions of the high-ranking officials under conditions given by the law, including its restricted authority of the prosecution and downsized personnel.