Jo Bae-sook, Chairwoman of the People Power Party's Special Committee for the Defense of Judicial Justice and Prevention of Dictatorship, and the lawyer for the deceased public official from Yangpyeong County Office in Gyeonggi Province, speak before filing a complaint against special prosecutor Min Jung-ki on charges of violating the Capital Markets Act and abuse of power at the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on the 22nd. Yonhap News

The special prosecutor's team led by Min Jung-ki has transferred the "Unification Church's support for the Democratic Party" suspicion case, which originated from the testimony of Yoon Young-ho, former head of the Unification Church's World Headquarters, to the National Investigation Headquarters of the Korean National Police Agency on the 9th.

This transfer comes approximately four months after the suspicion was first recognized and deemed outside the special prosecutor's investigative scope. The team now faces criticism for belatedly attempting to rectify the situation following recent controversies surrounding "biased investigations."

The special prosecutor's team announced through a press release on the same day, "The preliminary investigation (pre-indictment investigation) into the case of politicians' contact with the Unification Church has been transferred to the National Investigation Headquarters this afternoon."

This case is related to the testimony secured by the special prosecutor's team in August from Yoon, former head of the Unification Church, stating that "the Unification Church supported politicians from the Democratic Party in addition to the People Power Party."

Yoon reportedly testified to the special prosecutor's team at the time that he had provided tens of millions of won each to two Democratic Party lawmakers between 2018 and 2020.

On the 5th, during the trial for charges including embezzlement related to his duties, Yoon also claimed that he had approached four ministers in the current government ahead of a church event in February 2022, and that two of them had met with Han Hak-ja, the President of the Unification Church.

He then questioned the special prosecutor's team about why the "list of National Assembly members," which he had mentioned along with this fact during the investigation and was recorded in the investigation report, was omitted from the evidence records.

The special prosecutor's team is also known to have seized documents marked "VIP Gifts" during the search and seizure of Yoon and his spouse's computers.

The document, created on January 22, 2022, reportedly contains the names of seven politicians from both the ruling and opposition parties.

This led to criticism from the political circles that the special prosecutor's team, despite uncovering evidence of the Unification Church's support for the Democratic Party, only investigated illegal donations to the People Power Party.

The special prosecutor's team charged Yoon and President Han with illegal donations to the People Power Party and lawmaker Kwon Seong-dong. No compulsory investigations, summons, or indictments were made regarding Democratic Party politicians.

In a briefing the previous day, the special prosecutor's team admitted to hearing Yoon's related testimony in August but explained that they had determined it was not within the scope of their investigation by law.

The team's stance is that, considering the purpose of the special prosecutor's law concerning allegations related to the First Lady, this matter clearly falls outside the scope of investigation in terms of personnel, materials, and timing. They emphasized that the incident occurred long before the 20th presidential election and was unrelated to the First Lady.

They also stressed that the view that they intentionally did not investigate a particular political party is entirely untrue.

In response to accusations of dereliction of duty, the special prosecutor's team explained that they had assigned a preliminary investigation case number to Yoon's testimony, created case records based on the relevant information, and planned to transfer it to another investigative agency.

It is known that the special prosecutor's team assigned a case number in early last month.

This explanation implies that they had not entirely neglected the matter.

However, given that there are not a few cases investigated by the special prosecutor's team that are unrelated to the First Lady, some argue that this explanation lacks persuasiveness.

Examples include a case where they investigated the suspected route change of the Yangpyeong highway, became aware of a bribery charge against a public official from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, and indicted him, and a case where they indicted Kim Ye-sung, known as a "butler" for the First Lady's family, on charges of embezzlement unrelated to the First Lady.

Furthermore, the criticism of "delayed response" is raised because a case deemed outside the investigative scope was only transferred after controversies of biased investigation arose, instead of being immediately handed over to the police or prosecution.

Legal circles point out that while the special prosecutor's team was "muffling" the case, the statute of limitations for the related charges continued to run. Considering that the statute of limitations for violating the Political Funds Act is seven years, cases involving the receipt of money in 2018 will expire by the end of this year, making it difficult to prosecute the individuals involved.