White-collar crime pays

Contrary to appearances, Indonesia essentially remains a haven for white-collar criminals, particularly corruptors. The government may appear to be upping the ante against corruptors, making several arrests of high-profile public figures here and there over the past few weeks, but its record of actually putting big-time corruptors behind bars is dismal.

Recent developments suggest the government has finally gotten down to the business of going after big-time corruptors. But unless these arrests lead to real convictions with punishments that truly fit the gravity of the crimes, then this latest campaign will end up, like all previous anti-graft efforts, as nothing more than a public relations gimmick for the government of President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

We are already seeing many legal proceedings, including those still ongoing and others that have been settled in the courts, degenerate into a series of legal farces.

The House of Representatives Speaker Akbar Tandjung, a suspect in a Rp 40 billion corruption case, is in detention but is still allowed to keep his job, and even to use his important post to make veiled threats, from inside his cell, about the nation becoming more unstable unless the campaign against him stops.

Bank Indonesia Governor Sjahril Sabirin was convicted under the country's corruption law, but he remains a free man and continues to run the central bank, apparently because he has appealed his conviction to a higher court.

Suspects in white-collar crimes here really do have it their way. Unlike common criminals, they do not need to spend time behind bars until the very last avenue for obtaining a legal reprieve has been exhausted.

The case of businessman Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, the youngest son of former president Soeharto, is illustrative of the leniency of our legal system in dealing with corruption cases.

A court of law convicted Tommy of corruption in 2000, yet he did not spend a single day behind bars as he appealed his conviction all the way up to the Supreme Court. And once the nation's highest court ruled against Tommy, on the very day he was supposed to begin serving his prison term he disappeared.

Tommy was subsequently arrested in November 2001 and will be tried once again beginning this week, this time for the murder of the presiding judge who convicted him back in 2000, as well as for the illegal possession of firearms and for illegal flight from the law.

Of course, none of this would have been necessary had the authorities treated Tommy like a common criminal in the first place, and put him behind bars the moment he was declared a suspect in the corruption case.

But then our courts of law have bizarre ways of dealing with corruptors. In one case, a businessman was given a light sentence by a judge so as to allow him to return to society quickly, resume his business and make money to repay his debts to the state. Did it not occur to the judge that this businessman might just return to his old corrupt practices precisely because of the leniency of his sentence?

In other cases, since corruption in the legal sense is narrowly defined as an act that causes financial losses to the state, returning the money that one has stolen has been used as a mitigating factor by some judges in considering sentences for corruptors. And you only need to return the money the prosecutors have uncovered.

All these examples send the wrong signal. They tell crooks, and potential crooks, that white-collar crime, particularly corruption, pays in this country. And it pays handsomely. Impunity remains the norm rather than the exception.

In fact, the more money you steal, the better your chances of surviving any legal action, should you be one of the unlucky few who is caught. Remember, state prosecutors only deal with one embezzlement case at a time, and if we go by the land scam corruption case against Tommy in 2000, the prosecutors only go for cases involving a paltry sum. That means the more you steal, the more likely you are to get away with it.

Even if you are ever caught, you can virtually buy your way out of trouble, or at the very least you can afford a pack of high-priced lawyers to get you out of trouble. The worst that can happen is that you have to spend a few months, or maybe one or two years, behind bars, and once you are out you can enjoy the rest of the loot that the state never found.

It is no wonder that this country remains as corrupt today as it was during the Soeharto regime.

Corruption is as evil, if not more so, than drug trafficking. Like drug trafficking, corruption kills people. Because corruption leads to state bankruptcy, it deprives many people of their right to health care and education for their children. It is corruption that brought this nation to its present state of near bankruptcy, with all the dire consequences.

Our courts of law have of late been predisposed to mete out the death penalty for drug traffickers, because of the menace they pose to society. Now we would like to see judges courageous enough to send corruptors to the executioner. That would send a loud message to corruptors, and potential corruptors, that crime never pays.

This country would certainly be far better off, and more livable, without them.