Prosecutor target KPUD suppliers
Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Six of nine companies offered contracts by the Jakarta Elections Commission (KPUD) in 2004 supplied fictitious addresses, making it difficult for prosecutors investigating alleged graft in the commission to track down the owners.
"We found six suppliers using fictitious addresses. However, we will ask KPUD staff to provide the owners' addresses," chairman of the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office investigation team Syaeful Taher told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
The Prosecutor's Office has so far detained three suspects in the alleged embezzlement of Rp 13 billion in the 2004 elections.
The three suspects are KPUD chairman Muhammad Taufik, KPUD member A. Riza Patria and KPUD treasurer Neneng Euis Palupi.
Taufik is being held in the South Jakarta Prosecutor's Office detention center, Neneng in the Pondok Bambu Women's Penitentiary in East Jakarta and Riza in Selemba Penitentiary, Central Jakarta.
Syaeful said the elections body, for example, had used a company that shut down in 2003 as one of its suppliers.
The owner of one of the suppliers, CV Beta Lestari Prima, claimed the company name had been used by a friend of Taufik's to bid in the KPUD tender, and won, Syaeful said.
He said based on information provided by several KPUD staff members, who had been interrogated by prosecutors, the tenders for all 15 electoral goods and services had not been properly carried out.
Syaeful said the tender processes were carried out by Taufik and other KPUD members, while KPUD staff members had only been asked to sign documents.
Furthermore, he claimed many procurement documents had been made as late as January 2005.
"The KPUD issued false documents when the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) audited the institution," he added.
The investigation into alleged corruption in the KPUD is based on reports made by City Council Commission A for legal and administrative affairs, which found a number of irregularities in goods and services procurements.
Commission A, which investigated the alleged misuse of funds by KPU members during the elections, said earlier that it had found irregularities resulting in state losses amounting to Rp 13 billion.
It alleged that the poll commission had failed to pay Rp 4.2 billion in personnel income and value-added taxes.
It also discovered questionable tenders and an alleged markup in the purchase of 180,000 vests for Rp 12 billion (or Rp 66,000 each). The price was far higher than the market price of Rp 25,000 per vest, the commission said.
The commission has also been accused of marking up the rent on three houses it uses for offices in Kepulauan Seribu regency, as it apparently only paid Rp 25 million a year to the owners of the houses, not the Rp 170 million for the three houses that it reported.