Whistle-blower fails to convince KPK

Irawaty Wardany ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Tue, 01/20/2009 10:09 AM  |  National

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has yet to launch a formal investigation into alleged bribery in the election of Bank Indonesia’s senior deputy governor in 2004, five months after a lawmaker admitted to accepting money to do just that.

The inaction has defied a report from the Financial Transaction Reports Analysis Center (PPATK), which found 102 people cashed in 400 travelers’ checks following the election in June 2004.

KPK chair Antasari Azhar said Monday the antigraft body was have a hard time finding a motive for the alleged bribery.

“We need to determine the motive behind a certain activity. We haven’t found one yet,” Antasari told reporters.

Unlike their other bribery stings, in the BI case investigators did not catch alleged perpetrators receiving bribes red-handed.

The KPK could never catch people who offered or received the bribes in the act since they took on the case after the fact, Antasari said.

“That’s why I regret nobody reported the case to law enforcement back then,” he said.

The alleged bribery stepped into the spotlight after Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) legislator Agus Tjondro Prayitno admitted to the KPK in August last year to having accepted Rp 500 million (US$44,742) in travelers’ checks a few days after the House approved Miranda Goeltom as the central bank’s senior deputy governor.

The anticorruption body then asked the agency which combats money laundering to trace the flow of those identified checks.

PPATK head Yunus Husein questioned KPK’s sluggishness in handling the case.

“If somebody here [KPK] has caught a cold,  Let’s ‘cure’ it together,” he said.

Yunus said he had handed over documents to further KPK’s investigation, including funding sources and names of those who had cashed checks.

PPATK data showed 102 people, including several House members, had cashed in travelers’ checks following the election of the BI senior deputy governor in June 2004. Yunus refused to identify the lawmakers, but he suspected other politicians who had accepted the bribes might have asked their aides to cash the checks to protect themselves.

“We’ve handed all the data to the KPK, including the identity of the people who cashed the checks and copies of their ID cards,” he said.

He said further the data could not be presented as evidence in court, but would help the KPK kick start a probe.

Indonesia Corruption Watch analyst Emerson Yuntho said KPK’s reluctance revealed political or
business interests were at play in the case.

“It’s not a matter of a lack of evidence. It is a matter of whether the KPK has the will or doesn’t to properly investigate,” Emerson said.

Zainal Arifin Mochtar from Gadjah Mada University’s Center for Anticorruption Studies (Pukat) said there was something “weird” in the stalled case.

“The KPK has given this bribery case special treatment. They used to quickly take action in every case, even if political motives were absent,” he said.

He speculated the inaction might be related to Antasari’s election as  KPK chair in December 2007.

To win the post, Antasari secured votes from PDI-P and Golkar, the two largest factions in the House.

“The KPK needs to prove the accusation is wrong by thoroughly investigating it,” he said.

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