(Bloomberg) — South Korean corruption investigators have asked police to carry out the arrest of President Yoon Suk Yeol after their own attempt last week ended in failure following an hours-long standoff with his security team.
Most Read from Bloomberg
The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials said Monday that it asked the police to handle the arrest on their behalf. It was not immediately clear if police can execute an arrest warrant issued for the CIO. Police did not immediately comment.
As the court-issued warrant is set to expire by the end of the day, the CIO will ask the court to extend it, according to Yonhap News. The CIO also vowed to keep running the insurrection probe into the president’s brief imposition of martial law, the report said.
A request to extend the warrant suggests that a move by police to carry out the arrest may not happen Monday as the questioning of the president is further delayed. Either way, Yoon’s legal representative said the president will not cooperate and warned of legal action.
“The CIO is treating the police as its subordinate agency when it doesn’t have the authority to oversee a police investigation,” Yoon’s lawyer, Yoon Kab-keun, said in a text message to Bloomberg News.
Yoon’s representatives are challenging the investigators’ jurisdiction to arrest the president based on the CIO act that regulates the watchdog’s operation. Insurrection is not included in the list of crimes the corruption agency can investigate under the law, though a clause says it can look into crimes related to abuse of power. The CIO has said it will investigate Yoon’s insurrection case based on that clause. The arrest of a sitting president would be the first in the nation’s history, if it materializes.
As investigators struggle to take Yoon into custody, the embattled leader fortified his residence with barbed wire fences, photos showed, further complicating efforts to arrest him. Yoon’s security chief said Sunday that his office will not back down in guarding the president, citing an ongoing controversy over the investigators’ jurisdiction.
A team from the CIO tried to arrest the impeached leader on Friday but the officials abandoned their bid hours later as Yoon’s security team blocked their attempt with thousands of Yoon’s supporters gathered outside the president’s residence.
