Police told to get cracking on corruption cases
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