President Yoon Suk Yeol’s legal team said Friday it would take action against the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials for allegedly concealing that a court had previously rejected the CIO’s warrant requests before a different court issued an arrest warrant for the president, in an apparent last-ditch effort to find fault in the legal proceedings to arrest Yoon.
The sitting president’s lawyer Yoon Kab-keun told reporters that it would file a complaint against the CIO, which led the joint probe team that arrested Yoon on charges of leading the insurrection through a self-coup.
He said his team would do so “in the near future” because the CIO had failed to faithfully respond to ruling party lawmaker Rep. Joo Jin-woo’s question over whether the Seoul Central District Court had previously rejected warrant requests from the CIO.
According to Yoon’s legal representatives, the Seoul Central District Court rejected the CIO’s application for a communication data warrant and a search warrant early in December, both of which indicated that Yoon was the party accused.
Attorney Yoon initially said the CIO had its arrest warrant related to President Yoon rejected at the Seoul Central District Court on Dec. 20, but later said it was the warrant to arrest ex-Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, one of the key figures behind the planning of the martial law imposition in December.
According to attorney Yoon, these prior rejections prove that the CIO’s following move to apply for a warrant at another court — the Seoul Western District Court — should be deemed against the law. He added the move stems from the CIO’s frustration that the Seoul Central District Court would not issue a warrant for its benefit.
Rep. Joo earlier on Friday said that the president “must be released from prison immediately” because the CIO’s choice of having the warrant issued at the Seoul Western District Court while deliberately concealing that Seoul Central District Court had earlier rejected CIO warrants constitutes an illegal act.
The CIO did not immediately comment on the matter.
Aside from whether the CIO had failed to faithfully answer a lawmaker’s formal question, another point of contention is whether the Seoul Central District Court is the only valid court with which the CIO could institute its prosecution.
Article 31 of the Act on the Establishment and Operation of the CIO shows that the case that CIO investigated shall be under the jurisdiction of the Seoul Central District Court. But the same clause indicates that the CIO’s case may be litigated at other competent courts, considering the jurisdiction of the corruption that is alleged to have occurred or where evidence is located.
Based on the same act, Yoon’s legal representatives have insisted that only CIO warrants issued at the Seoul Central District Court are valid. CIO Chief Prosecutor Oh Dong-woon, however, has claimed that the CIO’s warrants issued by the Seoul Western District Court were legitimate because Yoon’s official residence falls under the court’s territorial jurisdiction.