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.