Police admit to slow graft probe at SOEs
Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The police say they are cautiously moving on a number of graft cases in state-owned enterprises, asserting that some of the relevant documents and evidence submitted to the police would be inadmissible in court.
Director of the Anticorruption Unit at National Police Headquarters, Brig. Gen. Indarto, who is also deputy head of the interdepartmental anticorruption team, said the police investigators were also being extra careful in investigating the cases as they implicated some top government officials.
"We know that the public are growing restless with so many stories about graft being published in the newspapers, and the fact that no suspects have been named yet by the police. But we have to do it our own way," Indarto told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.
Head of the antigraft team at the Office of the State Minister for State Enterprises, Lendo Novo, had criticized the police for being too slow in investigating suspected graft cases. The team said that it had submitted complete files to the police on at least seven cases, meaning that the police should have named suspects by now.
But Indarto said that the police could not charge any suspects yet as they had to verify all of the evidence that had been submitted. "These people (the members of ministerial anticorruption team) are not real investigators so they are not aware of the problems we face when conducting our probes.
"We can't just charge people as suspects if we don't have strong prima facie evidence and if the preliminary investigations are not complete," Indarto said.
From a document obtained by The Jakarta Post, it appears that the seven graft cases include a dubious Rp 745 billion loan from Bank BRI to the Domba Mas Group; the alleged misuse of Rp 70 billion for the procurement of IT equipment at BRI; and an alleged Rp 23.6 billion markup in the purchase of a ship for state-owned ferry company PT ASDP.
The other cases involve an alleged markup of $2.2 million in the purchase of a South Korean ship by PT ASDP; an alleged markup worth Rp 1.92 billion in human resources consultancy fees at airport operator PT Angkasa Pura, the alleged violation of an investment agreement at insurance firm PT Asuransi Jiwasraya, which resulted in losses of Rp 830 billion, and an alleged Rp 337 billion graft case involving state-owned electricity firm PLN's customer information system.
"All of the cases are still under preliminary investigation," Indarto said.
He added that the police investigators needed to refine the information obtained from the documents submitted by the government team as some of it would be inadmissible in court.
"Besides, we're not only handling graft cases in state enterprises. We have a lot of other cases waiting to be processed as well," Indarto added.
Meanwhile, chairman of Indonesian Police Watch, Neta S. Pane, said that the slow pace of the investigations was partly due to a lack of professionalism among some police investigators.
"We're afraid that some of the (police) insiders are working with the suspects so as to intentionally slow down the investigations. This is common practice," Neta told the Post.
Neta urged National Police chief Gen. Sutanto to reform the police by replacing officers who were not professional in their work.
"If the people inside the police were professional, then of course the police would be quicker in investigating crimes, and would also be able to regain public trust," Neta said.