319 investors file a 32 billion won bond complaint with an office that shuts next month

Five days after those investors filed, legal sources told Seoul Economic Daily that prosecutors cannot practically open new direct investigations with less than a month left before their own service is dissolved ^[5]. Referral to the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency means a wait of at least three weeks until that agency opens ^[6]. Add the five days already gone and at least 26 days pass between the complaint and the first day a body with jurisdiction exists ^[17]. Whether it can then order large-scale raids and account tracing depends on its offices, computer networks and case management systems being sufficiently in place ^[7].

The complainants asked for one of two things: a direct prosecution investigation, or a swift referral to the Financial Supervisory Service's special judicial police so raids could proceed ^[10]. The second route is in transition too, because the system under which prosecutors direct that unit is ending along with prosecutorial investigative powers ^[8]. In market manipulation, unfair trading and large-scale financial fraud, the work is tracing fund flows quickly and securing account and electronic records early, and when cases drift funds get moved and records disappear ^[9].

Split the case across the complainants and it is about 100 million won each, if the 32 billion won is spread evenly ^[16]. Lee Bok-hyun, the former FSS governor who leads the investors' legal team, said financial crime cases involving large numbers of victims have typically been taken up by prosecutors or the FSS on their own initiative. That did not happen this time ^[11]. "As the judicial system undergoes major change and investigative authority is scattered across multiple agencies, the range of matters victims must handle themselves has widened," Lee said ^[12].

Staffing is the second problem. The new agency will not find it easy to inherit the Prosecution Service's financial crime investigation capacity in a short period, and the shortage of specialists is the biggest obstacle ^[18]. A lawyer who formerly worked at the joint investigation unit for financial and securities crimes cited assessments of the prosecution personnel who applied to move to the new agency. Few of them have extensive experience investigating financial cases, the lawyer said ^[13]. The report does not say how many applied ^[19].

Six people from the prosecution were selected in the FSS's recruitment of specialist and experienced hires at grades 4 and 5 last month ^[14]. Some financial investigation personnel are going to the FSS instead of the new agency. The expectation is that the centre of gravity in financial investigations moves to its special judicial police ^[15].

If the agency opens with working systems and traces September complaints in its first weeks, the gap was a scheduling matter. If the FSS special judicial police ends up with the cases and the people, the new agency holds the jurisdiction and the FSS holds the experienced investigators ^[15]. I would expect the second, and those six hires at grades 4 and 5 are the reason ^[14]. A raid ordered by the new agency, in a financial case, in its first month of operation, would prove me wrong.