A Seoul court issued an arrest warrant for a former police chief charged with illegally intervening in elections and politics during the previous presidential administration.

The Seoul Central District Court on Wednesday issued the warrant for Kang Shin-myung, who was the commissioner general of the Korean National Police Agency between 2014 and 2016. 

The prosecution's arrest warrant requests for Kang's successor Lee Cheol-seong, who was reappointed to the top police post at the start of the Moon Jae-in administration, and two former police intelligence bureau chiefs were denied.

Kang, Lee and the two former bureau chiefs are suspected of violating election laws by collecting information and drawing up campaign strategies that could assist candidates favorable to then-President Park Geun-hye in the 2016 general elections and conducting illegal surveillance of figures critical of the conservative government.

Prosecutors plan to focus their probe into whether the political intervention was ordered by Park's presidential office.

The police, which accused the prosecution of trying to humiliate the police amid an escalating conflict over investigative rights reforms, have booked former and incumbent top-ranking prosecutors for allegedly overlooking a junior prosecutor's fabrication of official documents.