AGO's move to drop probe against top firms queried
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The decision by the Attorney General's Office (AGO) to drop investigations into an alleged lending scandal involving two companies linked to leaders at the highest level of government, may backfire against the institution, which is still struggling to improve its public image over poor performance in its handling of graft cases.
Lucky Djani, the deputy coordinator of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW), said that prosecutors must quickly explain to the public, the legal reasons behind its controversial decision.
"The public is very sensitive about the case as it is an alleged graft case involving (firms linked to) state officials. Prosecutors need to be sensitive, too," he told The Jakarta Post said on Saturday.
The public has grown "sick" of prosecutors' just dropping such cases without explanation, especially graft cases involving high- profile businesspeople or state officials, he added.
The AGO has long been deemed corrupt by average citizens. There were high hopes among the people, however, for swift reforms at the AGO after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono named in October Abdul Rahman Saleh, a former judge with a relatively clean reputation, as the new Attorney General.
Rudy Satryo, a criminal law expert of the University of Indonesia School of Law, warned that the controversial decision to drop the graft investigation into firms linked to high-profile figures would further undermine the image of the AGO.
"It's a wrong move. Why can't they be transparent?" he queried, reiterating that prosecutors must now convince the public that its decision was above board.
Lucky said the AGO offered no reasons for the decision, except to say that prosecutors "found no potential losses to the state in relation to the loans given to these companies based on a report from the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK)."
On Friday, the AGO announced that it decided to halt its graft investigation into cement company PT Semen Bosowa Maros and telecommunications firm PT Bakrie Telecom, which are owned by a nephew of Vice President Jusuf Kalla and Coordinating Minister for the Economy Aburizal Bakrie, respectively.
The AGO had previously planned to investigate up to 28 companies including those two over alleged loan irregularities by state-owned Bank Mandiri involving more than Rp 12 trillion (around US$1.28 billion) in loans. Prosecutors, at present, are only focusing their investigation on four companies. The AGO has detained top officials of two companies, and also former top officials of the giant Bank Mandiri as suspects in the case.