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Former Land Minister Kim Hyun-mi (Yonhap) |
Prosecutors on Thursday indicted 11 aides of former President Moon Jae-in, accusing them of manipulating government data on housing prices from June 2017 to November 2021.
The Daejeon District Prosecutors' Office accused the suspects, including former Land Minister Kim Hyun-mi and Moon’s ex-Chief Presidential Secretaries for Policy Kim Sang-jo and Kim Soo-hyun, of manipulating the data released by the state-affiliated real estate data provider a total of 125 times to create the appearance that the Moon administration’s policies were effective in curbing housing prices.
The suspects also repeatedly abused their influence to pressure officials at the Korea Real Estate Board to change the numbers in the statistics, prosecutors said. Kim Soo-hyun, for instance, ordered officials to change the data numbers upon reflecting a policy that was not yet released at the time, they alleged.
Several Real Estate Board officials protested the orders on several occasions, but Kim Sang-jo stepped in and threatened to cut the government budget for the agency, according to the prosecutors. The prosecutors noted that the board's data at the time showed that the median housing price gained merely 12 percent from November 2017 to July 2021 while other private data providers claimed that the corresponding price actually rose 81 percent in the cited period.
Meanwhile, the prosecutors dropped similar charges against 11 other ex-officials under the Moon administration, including two other former Chief Presidential Secretaries for Policy Jang Ha-sung and Lee Ho-seung.
The investigation against the suspects kicked-off after the Board of Audit and Inspection accused several officials under the former Moon administration of exerting undue pressure on government agencies to manipulate official data on income, employment and housing prices to back its key economic policies.
The audit agency asked the prosecution to investigate a total of 22 former government officials, including former Land Minister Kim Hyun-mi.
