The government has imposed travel bans on four officials of state oil and gas firm PT Pertamina and a director of Singapore-based oil importer PT Gold Manor International over graft allegations concerning the purchase of Zatapi crude oil.

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Abubakar Nataprawira said the travel bans would be effective as of Friday.

"They have been named as suspects in the case, but we have yet to arrest them. We will determine their status after we have completed our investigations," Abubakar said.

He refused to name the suspects.

Gold Manor won a Pertamina bidding process to supply 600,000 barrels of Zatapi crude oil to Indonesia in December last year, and began shipping the oil to a Pertamina's refinery in Cilacap, Central Java, in February 2008.

Legislators of the House of Representatives Commission VII overseeing energy and mineral resources revealed Gold Manor's proposal to the bidding process was incomplete, as it failed to include a detailed breakdown on the content of the Zatapi oil.

The Attorney General Office also began investigating the case on March. 2.

Last month, the police named four Pertamina officials, including a vice president and a former director, as suspects in the case.

Law enforcers raided Pertamina offices last week to seek more evidence.

Pertamina president director Ari Soemarno has repeatedly denied any irregularities in the case, saying the Zatapi import had not caused any losses to Pertamina.

"In fact, Pertamina benefited from Zatapi's lower price. We have saved US$5.5 for each barrel of Zatapi that we import. Thus, in total, we have saved US$3 million from 600,000 barrels of oil," he said.

However, the House inquiry committee, which was set up recently to study the country's management of oil and gas, said the case was only the tip of an iceberg in relation to allegations of massive corruption in Pertamina.

Pertamina, the sole distributor of subsidized fuel, needs to import both crude oil and fuel products to meet domestic demand.

Last year, Pertamina imported an average of 321,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude and between 300,000 and 350,000 bpd of fuel to cope with domestic demand of 1 million bpd of fuel.

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