Police to Establish Separate Dedicated Money Laundering Investigation Teams at Major City and Provincial Police Agencies

Criminal Proceeds Preservation Officers Appointed
at Seven Police Stations

The police have begun upgrading their investigative system to better trace criminal proceeds. To substantially recover damages caused by crimes affecting public welfare, each city and provincial police agency will establish a dedicated team for money laundering investigations as a separate unit.

On August 11, the National Investigation Headquarters of the National Police Agency announced plans to enhance the investigative framework for tracking criminal proceeds. The objective is to confiscate and recover criminal gains from new types of fraud, illegal private lending, and other crimes that impact the public, thereby facilitating victim restitution and severing the incentives for crime by fundamentally dismantling the associated criminal ecosystems. To improve the effectiveness of investigations, the police will first strengthen financial tracing, which precedes the preservation of criminal proceeds, and bolster the investigative structure by introducing officers specializing in preservation work at police stations.

Seoul Seodaemun-gu Police Agency, National Investigation Headquarters. Photo by Jinhyung Kang

Preservation of criminal proceeds refers to measures taken during the police investigation phase to secure court decisions on pre-prosecution confiscation and preservation, thus preventing suspects from disposing of assets registered under their names. Efforts such as operating city and provincial teams for tracking criminal profits since 2019 have resulted in a twelvefold increase in preserved amounts, from 70.2 billion won in 2019 to 850 billion won last year. During this period, the number of preservation cases also surged thirty-fivefold, from 96 cases to 3,400 cases.

However, as criminal organizations employ increasingly sophisticated and clandestine methods for laundering and concealing illicit gains, the police are also reinforcing their investigative system. Starting with personnel appointments in the second half of this year, the criminal proceeds tracking teams at the Seoul, Gyeonggi Nambu, and Busan agencies—areas with frequent money laundering crimes—will be split into specialized “Criminal Proceeds Preservation Teams” and “Financial Tracing Investigation Teams.”

Beginning in the first half of next year, plans call for expanding the financial tracing investigation teams to the Incheon, Gyeonggi Bukbu, and Gyeongnam agencies. The newly established financial tracing teams will be dedicated to proactively investigating money laundering offenses and handling investigations into specific financial transaction information cases transferred by the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). Based on their performance, further nationwide expansion will be considered.

In addition, specialized personnel dedicated to tracking criminal proceeds—previously centered at the city and provincial agency level—will be deployed to local police stations. In this year’s second-half personnel rotations, taking into account the demand for relevant operations and the scale of staffing increases at each station, major police stations will assign officers with expertise in criminal proceeds preservation to handle these tasks directly. Priority will be given to professionals with backgrounds such as police officers who have completed an MBA program or those holding accounting certifications.

Initially, such officers will be assigned to seven locations including the Gangnam region of Seoul (Gangnam, Songpa, Suseo, Gangdong), Busan (Busan Dongnae, Busanjin), and Gyeonggi Nambu (Suwon Gwonseon). Depending on the effectiveness of operations, this system will gradually be expanded to all first-grade police stations.

Hong Seokki, chief of the National Investigation Headquarters, stated, “Financial tracing and criminal proceeds preservation are key investigative procedures for the substantial recovery of victims’ losses. We will continue to broaden the perspective of investigations from mere arrests and punishment to also focus on restitution for victims.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.