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Govt told to improve accounts monitoring
The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Tue, 06/05/2007 9:07 AM
Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) said Monday the government and legislators should be more scrupulous in monitoring unaudited government accounts, citing an increase in the number of such accounts at ministries and government institutions.
""There are about 5,195 unspecified or non-budgetary accounts. Many of them are usually used to funnel funds for political campaigns and activities,"" said Ibrahim F. Badoh, head of political corruption monitoring at ICW, at a media conference.
He said the government, through the finance minister, should freeze all unaudited government accounts because of potential graft.
The Finance Ministry has unearthed 2,000 more unaudited accounts, with funds amounting to Rp 17.6 trillion (over US$2 billion).
""That amount has reached about 2.6 percent of the total 2006 state budget, or 44.6 percent of the total state education budget allocation,"" Ibrahim said. The 2006 state budget was Rp 651.9 trillion.
In 2004, the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) found 600 unaudited accounts and in 2005 it uncovered a further 1,303, with funds amounting to Rp 8.4 trillion.
The monitoring of unspecified accounts, ICW said, should be a government priority because such accounts are prone to misuse through the illegal distribution of funds held within for, for example, the election campaigns of presidential candidates in 2004.
""BPK should audit those accounts and hand the evidence over to prosecutors, the police or the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) if there are any indications of graft,"" Ibrahim said.
He said the lack of standards for pricing, budgets, cost-analyses and services had weakened the administrative system that handles budget allocation.
He added that not all of the unaudited accounts were categorized as graft-prone as many were created to tackle the state budget deficit.
Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (Fitra) secretary general Arif Nur Alam said the government needed to establish a systematic approach to effectively eradicate the graft-prone accounts.
""With ICW, we plan to meet with the honorary council of the House of Representatives to report about this matter,"" he said.
Arif said KPK should work swiftly and diligently to investigate the illegal distribution of funds from the fisheries ministry.
A testimony by former fisheries minister and graft suspect Rokhmin Dahuri during his corruption trial stating that he distributed funds to help finance the election campaigns of all presidential candidates in 2004 have caused a stir as the incumbent President was reportedly among the recipients of the ministry's non-budgetary funds.
Meanwhile, Eggi Sudjana of the People's Opposition Movement has reported former presidential candidate and recipient of the fisheries ministry's non-budgetary funds, Amien Rais, to the KPK.
""Amien's confession of having received the money from Rokhmin was strong evidence for the KPK to proceed with the investigation,"" he said.
Eggi said the commission should also investigate other recipients of the funds, such as former vice presidential candidate Salahuddin Wahid and legislator Fachri Hamzah. Both Fachri and Salahuddin have admitted to receiving the funds. (14)
