Include family members in crypto probes

The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission will embark on an investigation into cryptocurrency holdings by lawmakers for three months from next week. The goal is to learn their acquisition and transaction history to look into the issue of a conflict of interest in their lawmaking activities. But as the commission admitted, the probe could have limits from the start.

That’s because our lawmakers have strongly restricted the commission’s probe of themselves and left out their family members, including spouses and children. The governing People Power Party (PPP) and the Democratic Party (DP) passed a bipartisan resolution in May asking the commission to look into the digital coin holdings of all legislators after DP Rep. Kim Nam-kook, now an independent, caused a stir over his repeated cryptocurrency trades during legislative sessions. They recently handed in their agreement to allow the commission access to their private transaction records. But they disallowed the commission from looking into such information on their spouses, children and parents.

Having access to crypto holdings by families is essential as lawmakers can invest in digital assets under borrowed names to avoid the conflict-of-interest issue. Eight out of 11 lawmakers from the PPP and the DP, who voluntarily reported their holdings and trade in digital tokens, motioned the new bills related to crypto currencies.

The bills mostly favor crypto investors with benefits to the industry, tax incentives and protection for investors. Investigating family members is essential to discovering suspicious insider trading and illicit sharing of confidential information. The rivaling parties who differ in every issue since the clash over the discharge of the wastewater from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant are united on this particular issue.

Under the revision to the decree of the Public Employees Ethics Act, civil servants ranked 1st grade and higher must report the one-year holding of their cryptocurrencies when they report their wealth to the authorities. Based on the amendment, they must submit crypto data on their spouses and immediate family from next year. Lawmakers should have followed similar guidelines this time, too.

When the committee investigated real estate assets after the scandal in 2021 over speculative investment by employees of Korea Land & Housing Corporation, lawmakers agreed to a probe on their property trade as well as the history on their families. The committee discovered 25 lawmakers of illicit activities, of which 10 came from family records. Former PPP lawmaker Yoon Hee-suk even resigned over the allegation over her father breaking the land ownership law. But lawmakers from both sides of the aisle made sure that they built a strong protection against the investigation on cryptocurrencies. They must agree to sharing data on their families to restore public confidence in the legislature.