The Seoul police agency on Monday denied allegations that it had destroyed evidence and hampered a probe into the national spy agency's alleged attempt to influence public opinion ahead of last year's presidential election.
Prosecutors on Sunday said that a mid-ranking official of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA), whose identity has been withheld, had allegedly permanently deleted data on a computer hard disk ahead of a prosecution raid into the agency's headquarters.
A team of prosecutors and investigators raided the cyber crime unit of the SMPA in central Seoul a week ago, seizing computer hard drives and relevant documents to verify claims that the agency had pressured a police investigation team not to delve too deeply into the spy agency's alleged wrongdoing.
"A computer where the data had been deleted did not contain any investigative records regarding the National Intelligence Service (NIS)," an SMPA official said, denying the prosecution's claims,
That mid-ranking official claimed that he had deleted the data at his own discretion without any order from higher-ups.
The SMPA, however, said that official has been transferred to another department within the agency as his behavior could have created misunderstandings.
The prosecution probe came after a police officer, who had looked into the alleged wrongdoing by the NIS, claimed that she could not fully investigate the case because of pressure from her superiors at the SMPA.
The NIS is suspected to have mobilized some of its agents to illegally post a slew of politically sensitive comments against the then main opposition candidate on the Internet to sway public opinion ahead of December's presidential vote.
A former SMPA chief was questioned by the prosecution on Saturday. It was the second time that Kim Yong-pan, who had headed the SMPA for about two years until early this year, has undergone questioning in connection with the case. (Yonhap News)
