금융소비자보호와 금융범죄수사

Abstract

Financial consumer protection is an essential element for reliability and integrity of the financial market. The current financial consumer protection system of Korea is focused on regulating unjust sales practices and mediating financial disputes. Financial consumers, however, are harmed by financial crimes. Also, financial crimes impairs the reliability of financial market, which eventually damages the consumers. Now we need to consider the significance of preventing financial crimes from the view point of financial consumer protection. To suppress financial crimes, following three factors should be satisfied: as many as suspicious cases should be uncovered; they should be efficiently investigated; and violators should be submitted to harsher punishments. Current investigating system, however, is being criticized for followings: its inefficiency, which is due to the weak investigation power of the financial supervisory authority, complicated investigation process, and lack of cooperation among related authorities; and the mild punishment for financial crimes. To improve current investigation system, in addition to strengthening the financial supervisory authority's investigating power, the system needs to be modified so that related authorities can exchange and share professional manpower and information collected, which will supplement expertise lacked by each authority. For this, it is recommended that a coordination agency should be established, which improves efforts across the related authorities to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. Especially when the agency is authorized to take charge of maintaining information collected by each authority and providing them in response to each authority's necessity, the probability of personal information infringement will be reduced. Also, financial penalty should be introduced, which should exceed the financial gain from violation, that will decrease the incentive to financial crimes.