A local court has rejected pretrial detention warrants for two former senior officials accused of involvement in manipulated housing price statistics during the previous Moon Jae-in administration.

The Daejeon District Court on Monday threw out the prosecution’s warrant request for former vice land minister Yoon Sung-won and Lee Moon-ki, former chief of the National Agency for Administrative City Construction, on charges of abuse of authority and violating the Statistics Act.

The court reasoned that a risk of flight or destruction of evidence is unlikely, citing faithful cooperation by the suspects in the investigation and the substantial amount of evidence already secured by authorities.

Yoon and Lee, who served as the first vice land minister and the head of the ministry’s housing and land office, respectively, are accused of exerting undue influence on the Korea Real Estate Agency to manipulate statistical figures.

The two reportedly denied the charges during the prosecution's investigation.

In September of last year, the Board of Audit and Inspection requested that the prosecution investigate 22 former government officials on suspicion that the Moon administration pressured state agencies to manipulate official data on income, employment and housing prices to support its key economic and real estate policies.