The prosecution has requested the court to issue an arrest warrant for former Industry Minister Paik Un-gyu for intervening in the alleged fabrication of the economic viability assessment of the Wolsong-1 nuclear reactor. 

The Daejeon District Prosecutors’ Office said on Thursday that it sought the court warrant for Paik earlier in the day on charges of power abuse and obstruction of business. 

The prosecution argued that the former minister abused his authority in the process of assessing the country’s second-oldest reactor which the government decided to close in 2019, three years earlier than its original mandate. 

The Board of Audit and Inspection(BAI) earlier claimed that Paik ordered his officials to enable the early closure of the reactor and its immediate shutdown. 

The prosecution suspects he also meddled in the inclusion of the reactor’s early shutdown as a criterion for assessing the performance of the head of the nuclear reactor’s operator. 

The former minister is also accused of being involved in the destruction of 530 documents related to the reactor, for which three ministry officials were already arrested and indicted last month.

The former minister is known to have denied most of the charges during prosecution questioning late last month.