The investigation team led by independent counsel Park Young-soo will officially start its work Wednesday. Special counsel Park and his 105-strong team is tasked with getting to the bottom of the key allegations involving President Park Geun-hye and her associates implicated in the Choi Soon-sil scandal.

The investigation should be conducted both swiftly and thoroughly because its outcome could affect the Constitutional Court’s review of the parliamentary impeachment of the president.

It was well-advised in this regard that the team had already imposed a travel ban on three tycoons -- Lee Jae-yong of Samsung, Chey Tae-won of SK and Shin Dong-bin of Lotte -- and Park’s former key aides like Kim Ki-choon and Woo Byung-woo.

Investigators also questioned a senior Samsung executive over the weekend in what they described as a “preliminary step” to delve into the allegation that the nation’s biggest conglomerate financed dressage training in Germany for Choi’s daughter.

Investigators suspect that Samsung, which also offered funds to two foundations allegedly controlled by Choi, gave money in return for government favors, which could entrap both President Park and Choi with bribery.

The investigation team’s task to uncover the truth has become more important since the embattled president denied the charges against her made by the National Assembly and the state prosecution.

President Park’s defiance was not unexpected, but what she said in her position paper sent to the Constitutional Court is more frustrating than infuriating.

The president effectively said that she did not know personally or was not directly involved in the major allegations involving Choi, her associates and senior government officials. She also denied that she did anything serious enough to warrant her impeachment.

She even brought up the previous high-profile influence-peddling cases of the Roh Moo-hyun and Lee Myung-bak administrations in a bid to show that the National Assembly did wrong by impeaching her for similar charges.

At one point, President Park said in the position paper that Choi should be regarded as a member of her “kitchen cabinet” and that Choi’s involvement accounted for “less than 1 percent” of all the state affairs.

Describing a woman so derided and hated by the public, and who is now in custody for flagrant violations of the law, in this way is enough to make one speechless. It is also ridiculous to make a quantitative estimate of how much Choi interfered with state affairs. 

As expected, Choi, appearing at her first court hearing Monday, denied all the charges filed by the state prosecution, including those that she conspired with the president and her aides to extort money from conglomerates for the Mir and K-Sports foundations.

All of this calls for the special investigation team to find the truth and evidence which President Park and Choi cannot contest. Interrogating the president in person and seizing evidence at Cheong Wa Dae are indispensable in that regard.

Special counsel Park has already vowed to push ahead with questioning of the president and raiding the presidential office-residence with a court-issued search and seizure warrant. There should be no setback to the plan.

It is also important to speed up the investigation, given that the team has only 70 days for the case under the law. The independent counsel can seek to extend the investigation by 30 days, but the problem is any such extension needs to be authorized by none other than President Park.

Wrapping up the investigation by the 70-day deadline on Feb. 28 would also be desirable, as Constitutional Court Justice Lee Jung-mi is to retire March 13, following the retirement of its president Park Han-chul in January.

The court needs the consent of at least six of its nine justices to reach a ruling, and the planned retirement of justices Lee and Park raises concerns about an abnormal composition of the court.

It took the court 63 days to reach an agreement on the 2004 case of the late President Roh Moo-hyun, which had far fewer issues of contention. The general view therefore is that the court would not be able to make its verdict before Justice Park’s retirement. It then should try to rule on the case before Lee retires. This is why time is so important in the special investigation.