Rp 95b corruption case rocks North Sulawesi, Gorontalo

Yongker Rumthe, The Jakarta Post, Manado

North Sulawesi High Prosecutor's Office has arrested a man, identified as JW, in connection with a corruption case totaling Rp 95 billion that has implicated a number of government officers and businessmen in the province and in Gorontalo.

Chief of the Prosecutor's Office Martinus Manoi said JW's dossier had already been completed and he was scheduled to stand trial in Manado district court next week.

"The suspect will be charged with embezzling Rp 8 billion from the Rp 95 billion in funds distributed by the central government to attract small- and medium-scale enterprises to the province and Gorontalo since 1999," he said.

Manoi said his office had also arrested dozens of government officers and businessmen and was still searching for many others who were allegedly implicated in the cases.

"We will investigate the cases thoroughly because they have drawn serious attention from the provincial legislative council, and we have sufficient evidence and a list of names of those involved," he said.

The corruption was revealed when a number of village cooperatives were able to return the credit they had gained under the scheme to the government.

Meanwhile, N. Casdy, chief of the local empowerment of small- scale enterprises and cooperatives, said the central government had distributed a total of Rp 393.3 billion in financial aid to a number of cooperatives and small-scale enterprises in the province and Gorontalo since 1995, but only five percent, or Rp 20 billion, had been returned to the government.

"The prosecutor's office should work extra hard to investigate the credit liquidity as a majority of the funds has been misused," he said.