AGO dismisses report of rife fund abuses
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Attorney General's Office (AGO) rejected on Friday the audit of the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) that named the law enforcement institution as the country's leading state money abuser, saying that the audit had been performed only at several prosecutor's offices.
Spokesman for the Attorney General's Office Kemas Yahya Rahman said the BPK had apparently considered the delay in the payment of state revenue collected by the office as state losses.
"There are two kinds of state funds in the audit that we have allegedly misused, namely the non-tax state income (PNBP) and the development expenditure," Yahya said.
The Attorney General's Office collected PNBP from the fines collected from convicts.
Law No. 20/1997 on non-tax state revenues says PNBP covers all non-tax revenue. All government institutions are authorized to collect this sort of income, but are obliged to send it to the state as soon as possible.
Article 2 of the law says fines and hearing fees imposed on convicts were the main source of PNBP from the Attorney General's Office.
However, Article 8 opens the possibility for each government agency to use some of the funds for health services, training, law enforcement work and conservation work.
Yahya said many convicts had failed to pay their fines on time or because they filed an appeal with higher courts.
He added that many convicts also paid the fines and fees on an installment basis.
"These delayed payments, are considered by the BPK as irregularities," Yahya said.
Besides, Kemas said, the audit was conducted only on several prosecutor's offices, such as Banten and Riau, where they found the alleged misuse of state funds.
"Based on these audits, BPK made a generalization that all the prosecutor's offices had misused state money," Kemas said.
Banten Prosecutor's Office had not yet collected Rp 6.23 billion from convicts, which was termed fund misuse. BPK also discovered the alleged misuse of Rp 804 million in development funds in the provincial prosecutor's office, which Kemas said was additional expenditure needed to build a parking lot.
In the case of the Riau Prosecutor's Office, the BPK accused it of misusing Rp 11.4 billion in PNBP.
Kemas complained that the BPK announced the alleged misuse of state funds despite the fact that the state auditors and state prosecutors had met to discuss the matter.
"We have met with the BPK to clarify their findings. We made several follow-up steps as advised by the BPK. So, there should be no problem," said Kemas.