PKB finds $40m in 'leakage' from East Java's 2001 budget

PKB finds $40m in 'leakage' from East Java's 2001 budget

Ainur R. Sophiaan, The Jakarta Post, Surabaya

The National Awakening Party (PKB) is considering a rejection of
the East Java Governor's recent accountability speech addressed
to the provincial legislative council following revelations of
financial leakages of up to Rp 400 billion (US$40 million) from
the province's 2001 budget.

Syafruddin, chairman of the fact-finding team set up by the
provincial legislature's PKB faction to assess the governor's
accountability speech, said his team had found numerous financial
irregularities in many development projects during the 2001
fiscal year.

"With these findings, our faction is considering a rejection
of the governor's accountability speech and will ask both the
local police and high prosecutor's office to investigate the
irregularities," he said here on Tuesday.

Syafruddin explained that his team had checked a number of
development projects over the last two weeks and found evidence
of manipulation of funding in some while at least one other
project did not exist at all except on paper.

He said his team discovered that a 50-hectare coconut seedling
project in Banyuwangi which the governor specifically mentioned
in his accountability speech to the legislature on Feb. 12, was
one of the phantom projects.

"We did not find the project in the field when conducting our
investigations in Banyuwangi," he said.

He also said that according to the governor, the provincial
administration had cleared 60 percent of the land for a planned
agribusiness wholesale market in Sidoarjo, supposedly absorbing
Rp 31 billion from the 2001 budget "but my team found that the
cleared land was not nearly the amount he mentioned and a large
part of the land was still in private hands."

"We are confused as to which land the provincial
administration has appropriated for the agribusiness wholesale
market," he added.

According to the governor's accountability speech, of Rp 1.2
trillion allocated for the development projects during the last
fiscal year, 30 percent had been used to finance the coconut and
agribusiness projects as well as the purchase of a number of
computers supposedly worth Rp 21 million each.

Syafruddin said that his team also found that many roads and
bridges that had budget allocations for repairs were not
completed properly, meaning that only a fraction of the money
budgeted was actually used for repair work.

Meanwhile, Soenarjo, secretary of the East Java provincial
administration, brushed off PKB's allegations, saying they should
double check their findings against the administration's data.

"The PKB faction should have gotten accurate data on the
irregularities and then confirmed it with the governor, instead
of making controversial public statements, because the provincial
administration has its own data and necessary documents on all
projects carried out by the administration," argued Soenarjo

Regarding the agribusiness project, he added that the
provincial administration had already appropriated a part of the
land but could not clear all of it because most of it was being
held by private land speculators.

It was not clear why the project was originally put in the
budget if the administration did not own it.