Police told to get cracking on corruption cases

Abdul Khalik, Jakarta

Experts are calling on the National Police to improve their performance in investigating corruption cases that have caused trillions of rupiah in state losses.

Legal expert Luhut M. Pangaribuan said on Wednesday that the police had so far failed to meet people's expectations in dealing with big corruption cases.

"It is common knowledge that the police have failed in their duty to resolve all corruption cases. This failure has tarnished their image in the eyes of the public, and made their efforts to bring about reform a joke," Luhut told The Jakarta Post.

He was asked to comment on the police's performance in conjunction with the National Police's 58th anniversary, which falls on July 1.

Over the past year, the police have had little success in resolving high-profile corruption cases in the country, including the Rp 1.7 trillion Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) scandal, the Rp 20 trillion Account No. 502 case, and the Rp 900 billion State Logistics Agency (Bulog) fiasco.

In the BNI case, which involves several BNI officials and businesspeople, police have managed only to bring to court some low-level officials of BNI's Kebayoran Baru branch and little-known businesspeople, while alleged key perpetrators Maria Pauline Lumowa and Adrian Woworuntu walk free.

Maria, an Indonesian-born Dutch citizen, is still at large, while Adrian was released after the police failed to provide adequate evidence to the prosecutor's office, which rejected Adrian's case file four times.

Even more confusing was the way in which the police dealt with the Account No. 502 case. They had once named several high- ranking officials from Bank Indonesia, the now-defunct Indonesian Banking Restructuring Agency (IBRA), and individuals from private companies, but have now denied ever having declared them suspects.

In the Bulog case, police were forced to release the suspects due to their failure to submit solid evidence to the prosecutor's office.

According to Luhut, the failures are partly due to an institutionalized subculture that regards "gifts" from businesspeople as an acceptable way to finance their daily operations.

"This behavior is incompatible with laws that stipulate that any "gifts" received while on duty are considered bribes. Such behavior leads to permissive conduct, creating rampant corruption among the police," said Luhut.

He said, the National Police chief needed strong integrity and honesty to change the behavior of police personnel.

"We had chiefs in the 70s, such as the late Hoegeng, who dared to reform the institution from within. Unless we have a police chief of his caliber, we won't have capable police personnel," he said.

Aside from the subculture, most police investigators lacked the qualifications needed to investigate complicated corruption cases. This was the result of unclear recruitment and training processes, Luhut said.

Legal expert Pradjoto and Police Watch chairman Rashid Lubis concurred with Luhut, saying that many banking and other specific crimes, such as environmental and intellectual property rights cases, were left unresolved because police investigators had insufficient knowledge of those areas.

"They simply don't understand the problems, because many of them have no background knowledge. Economic, corruption, and banking cases require special expertise. I propose that officers handling such cases must at least hold bachelor degrees in business and law," Pradjoto told the Post.

Handling such cases is complicated by the fact that they mostly involve a lot of money, he said, adding that: "Suspects would be happy to share the money with investigators just to stop the process."

Rashid said his organization had found that from 2001 to 2002, none of the hundreds of specific crime cases reported had been brought to court.

Some unresolved corruption cases

No. Cases Potential State losses status 1. BNI Kebayoran Baru Rp 1.3 trillion *No assets have

been returned

*Key suspects

on the run 2. Account No. 502 Rp 20.9 trillion *Under police

investigation

*No suspects

declared 3. Bulog scam Rp 841 billion *All suspects

released

*Case file rejected 4. BRI-Pension fund Rp 200 billion *No suspects

declared

*Under police

investigation 5. BDB-Asiatic scam Rp 1.7 trillion *Several suspects

declared

*No detentions 6. Abdullah Puteh Rp 4.2 billion *One suspect

declared

*questioning

Puteh as a witness