School principal accused of misappropriating Rp 1b

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

A day after the Indonesian Corruption Watch revealed alleged corruption at a Jakarta elementary school, the former principal of SMU 13 state high school in North Jakarta was reported to the Jakarta Police on Friday for allegedly misusing Rp 913.25 million ($US100,247) from the school budget.

"The school committee's former secretary, Ading Sutisna, alleged that principal Yuwono did not report financial statements from the school's budgets according to standard public accountability," said lawyer Agus Rihat from the Consumers Legal Aid Institute (LBH Konsumen).

Ading allegedly discovered copies of two versions of financial reports for the 2002/2003 and the 2003/2004 budgets.

He said the versions that were submitted to the Jakarta Middle and Higher Education Agency were different from the versions he obtained from a student's parents.

According to Ading, the differences between the two versions of the 2002/2003 and the 2003/2004 financial reports amounted to Rp 305.2 million and Rp 536.15 million, respectively.

He also suspected a markup in the purchase of several air conditioners and computers, amounting to Rp 71.91 million.

"There are some expenses that should had been covered by the state budget or the city budget, but the school still charged admission fees to parents," Ading said.

In 2002, he added, the school charged an average of Rp 2 million to parents of the 300 new students. The admission fee increased to Rp 2.5 million in 2003, although initially the school had wanted to charge parents Rp 5 million.

"The school committee thought the fee was too high so it cut it in half," he said.

Ading claimed that he personally sent two letters to Yuwono, requesting an explanation of the different versions of the financial statements. "But he did not reply to the letters, so I decided to report him to the police."

He accused Yuwono of violating Law No. 31/1999 on corruption. He also said he had been dismissed from the school committee because he kept questioning the alleged budget inconsistencies.

Ading said he also found that the school committee had allocated Rp 6.5 million to buy cellular phones for some of its members.

Separately, Yuwono denied all of the allegations, saying the school's financial statements had already been approved by the school committee. "Ading was fired by the committee, so he is acting by himself."

He also said the school's financial statements were checked by the Jakarta Audit Agency every year.

"The last time the agency examined our financial report was three weeks ago," he said.

Yuwono also denied two versions of the financial statements existed.

"I obviously cannot misuse the money, because the admission fees collected from parents is kept in a bank account under the name of the school committee," said the 60-year-old former principal, who officially retired on Friday.