ⓒYONHAP News

The prosecution is going all out to get to the bottom of an alleged embezzlement scandal involving the organizer of the Wednesday Protest for the elderly South Korean victims of Japan's wartime sex slavery. 

Investigators raided the main headquarters of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan overnight and another office on Thursday.

The civic group has represented elderly victims of Japan's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, organizing the weekly Wednesday Protest, which urges Japan to issue a formal apology to the victims.  

Prosecution officials were tight-lipped when reporters asked if the case has to do with embezzlement. But after 12 hours of searching the group's headquarters, they apparently secured accounting data and related materials.

Prosecutors also searched a property in Seoul's Mapo District that is used as a rest facility by the victims, which may have been falsely registered by the civic group.

The raids came less than a week after a series of complaints were filed against Yoon Mee-hyang, the former head of the civic group, for allegedly misusing the group's funds for personal gain.

Yoon won a National Assembly seat as a proportional representative of the ruling Democratic Party's satellite party in the general election last month.

So far, a total of ten complaints have been filed with the prosecution against Yoon and other officials of the group.

Prosecutors are aiming to determine whether the group and its predecessor committed any accounting irregularities in the process of acquiring donations, and will also review whether Yoon raising funds via a personal bank account is a violation of donation and charity regulations.

As for allegations that the group purchased a shelter in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province for victims of Japan’s wartime sex slavery for far more than the market value and later sold it at a cheap price, prosecutors will try to determine if that constitutes an act of misappropriation.

The group has acknowledged that errors were committed in its accounting data but denied that donations were embezzled or illegally used.  

Meanwhile, Yoon was found to have met and issued an apology earlier on Tuesday to Lee Yong-soo, an elderly sex slavery victim who first raised the issues against the group.