Prosecutors have summoned a former presidential chief of staff for policy during the Moon Jae-in administration as a suspect regarding the alleged fabrication of key data on housing prices, income and employment.

The Daejeon District Prosecutors' Office on Monday began grilling  Kim Su-hyun on charges of power abuse, obstructing the exercise of rights, and violating the statistics law.

The prosecution launched the probe after the Board of Audit and Inspection(BAI) requested an investigation into 22 officials from the Moon government, including all four former presidential chiefs of staff for policy and former land minister Kim Hyun-mi.

Based on the preliminary outcome of its six-month probe, the state auditor said the previous administration had ordered the Korea Real Estate Board(REB), an affiliate of the land ministry, to manipulate data at least 94 times between 2017 and 2021.

The BAI suspects that Kim, while serving as senior presidential secretary for social affairs, ordered the REB to send reports on tentative housing price data from Seoul starting from June of 2017, under instructions from his predecessor Jang Ha-sung.

Providing statistical data to another government institution or agency is a violation of the statistics law.

Kim allegedly pressured the REB to explain when the confirmed data surpassed the tentative data, as well as a later order to make the tentative data lower than the actual figures.

Three former presidential chiefs of staff for policy – Jang, Kim Sang-jo and Lee Ho-seung – as well as former land minister Kim Hyun-mi were summoned for questioning last week.