Evidence on Bulog case incomplete: Marzuki

Evidence on Bulog case incomplete: Marzuki

Yogita Tahilramani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Former attorney general Marzuki Darusman suggested that the
House of Representatives gather all necessary evidence in
connection with the alleged misuse of funds from the State
Logistics Agency (Bulog) to enable a formal investigation.

Marzuki said on Friday that when he was attorney general in
2000, he only received notes of meetings involving the House's
Commission III, which had formed a team to look into the alleged
misuse of funds.

He said he received the notes from Widjanarko Puspojo, who was
at the time the deputy chief of the commission, which oversees
Bulog, forestry and agricultural affairs, and is the current
Bulog chief.

"Those notes were incomplete and were given to me simply on
the basis of sharing information. It was unofficial and the
Attorney General's Office could not legally take any action
then," Marzuki recalled.

The materials, Marzuki added, were obtained from the Supreme
Audit Agency (BPK) and the Development Finance Comptroller
(BPKP). Those reports also should have gone to other state
institutions, including the National Police, according to
Marzuki.

"When Widjanarko was named Bulog chief, he reportedly
completed the research into the alleged corrupted funds and found
that since 1994, some Rp 2.6 trillion had been allegedly used
(illegally). For instance, the money was invested in firms of
former president Soeharto, his family and his friends," Marzuki
told The Jakarta Post.

He was responding to reports from the House commission and the
Indonesian Corruption Watch that hundreds of billions of rupiah
from Bulog's non-budgetary funds were embezzled between January
1998 and December 1999. Both institutions based their reports on
the findings of the BPKP.

Attorney General's Office spokesman Barman Zahir said on
Thursday his office could only trace corrupted funds based on
hard evidence.

"It is not possible for us to act simply on people's words or
incomplete evidence," Barman said.

BPKP launched a special investigation into Bulog's activities
on Oct. 21, 1998, responding to significant discrepancies BPKP
had discovered in books kept by Bulog, specifically in regard to
its non-budgetary funds.

In report No. 02.03.02-300/D VII.2/2000, dated May 23, 2000,
BPKP said it suspended the special inquiry in May 1999 after then
Bulog chief Rahardi Ramelan refused to provide more data at the
request of president B.J. Habibie.

The inquiry resumed with a different team in July 1999, "due
to a trend of change in the government".

The subsequent 36-page report, signed by BPKP special
monitoring director Nasib Padmomihardjo, notes that apart from
the non-budgetary funds that went to Rahardi and the family of
Soeharto and their foundations, the alleged misuse of Rp 65
billion also was found "in the implementation of the importation
of groundnuts".

Two 1997 decrees issued by the minister of finance stated that
in order to maintain price stability, Bulog was exempt from
import taxes and value-added taxes at the government's expense in
the importation of 300,000 tons of groundnuts.

BPKP found evidence that Bulog transferred these "rights" to
private parties for a substantial fee of Rp 10.6 billion. The
rights were then resold by private parties, working in
collaboration with Bulog, to a third party, causing Rp 65 billion
in state losses.

The report found that violations also were committed by Bulog
in actions taken to stabilize cooking oil prices. The actions
were financed by Bank Indonesia with a 12 percent interest rate,
which was fully the responsibility of the state.

One major violation was Bulog's direct appointment of PT Salim
Oil Grain, without an open tender, to distribute cooking oil. The
state's losses in this instance were estimated at Rp 2.1 billion.