Police kept busy in 2004 with fuel depot raids
Police kept busy in 2004 with fuel depot raids
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Jakarta Police's regular raids against illegal fuel depots
throughout Greater Jakarta have resulted in the confiscation of a
total of 451,400 liters of various fuel types in this year alone.
The confiscated fuel comprised 207,200 liters of residue,
124,600 liters of diesel, 82,000 liters of kerosene 13,600 liters
of gasoline.
"The result of the operation indicates that a lot of dubious
practices are still clouding the "black gold" business in the
country.
"Most of the customers of these illegal depots are owners of
industrial firms. They can get lower prices at such fuel depots,"
head of the environment and natural resources department of the
Jakarta Police, Adj. Sr. Comr. Ahmad Haydar, said on Friday.
He said some of the buyers claimed that besides offering lower
prices, such depots also offered delivery services.
Haydar added that the illegal depots usually got the fuel from
leaks in the distribution chain.
Haydar's team discovered in July that at Pertamina's fuel
center in Plumpang, North Jakarta, 39 pump meters were broken or
adjusted to register inaccurate information on the fuel flow.
The finding lead to the suspicion that some officials at the
fuel center, in collusion with tanker truck drivers, had been
stealing fuel and selling it to an illegal distribution chain.
Haydar estimated that 100,000 liters of fuel were smuggled out
through some of the 1,500 trucks entering the depot every day.
Fuel theft seemingly occurs on both a small and large scale.
It is a common sight near Plumpang to see young men suddenly
run to a passing fuel truck and force open the truck lids to fill
the plastic bags they are carrying with a small amount of fuel.
However, the larger scale theft is allegedly carried out more
discreetly.
"It's not easy to prove that fuel is being stolen at Plumpang.
We have to scrutinize thousands of pages of sales reports,"
Haydar said.
That was the reason, he added, the police could only charge
the suspects in the Plumpang case for violating the law on
weights and measures, but not on corruption due to the lack of
evidence.