Senior prosecutors hold emergency meeting over moves to abolish elite investigation team

SEOUL, June 6 (Yonhap) -- Senior prosecutors held an emergency meeting Monday to discuss how to respond to a parliamentary committee's decision to scrap an elite investigation team charged with handling high-profile corruption cases. On Friday last week, the special parliamentary committee on judicial reform agreed to abolish the Central Investigation Department at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, an outlet that has looked into big cases involving high-level people under direct instruction from the prosecutor general. Lawmakers leading the drive accused the department of conducting politically oriented probes. Prosecutors have strongly protested the decision, saying such a special investigation team is vital to high-profile cases vulnerable to outside pressure and that the decision amounts to "disarming" prosecutors. The parliamentary committee's move came as the department has been expanding its probe into a massive corruption scandal involving savings banks. Prosecution officials accused lawmakers of trying to abolish the team and block the widening probe. On Monday, Prosecutor General Kim Joon-gyu and about 40 senior prosecutors at the Supreme Prosecutors' Office held an emergency meeting to discuss countermeasures. The office plans to release a statement summing up the discussions later in the day. The statement is expected to stress the need for keeping the special investigation team.