T

he Supreme Court has challenged Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) to validate data it cited in a report claiming the country’s courts have become a “safe haven for corrupters”.

The report, released last month, mentions that about 54 percent of defendants in corruption cases were acquitted by state courts between January and July this year.

“How could they not mention what their facts consist of, such as the people’s names,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Harifin Tumpa said on Friday.

He added that the watchdog’s failure to provide details of its findings might indicate it had manipulated its findings.

The report should have mentioned the names of the defendants acquitted, Harifin said.

ICW’s report states that 91 of the 166 defendants implicated in 103 corruption cases were acquitted. Yet, the report does not provide a detailed list of the cases and the names of those implicated.

According to Harifin, the figures provided by ICW differed to the Supreme Court’s records.

“Where did they get their data from anyway?” he said, as quoted by detik.com news portal.

He added that if the report were fair, it would count the number of individuals implicated in every case instead of using the number of cases to indicate the number of defendants. For example, he said, one hundred cases would not necessarily equate to 100 defendants, but may involve 200 defendants altogether.

The Supreme Court lists the names of people indicted with data on their sentences, he stated, adding that the Supreme Court was ready to compare findings with ICW.

“Let us compare. If necessary, someone [independent] can judge the data presented,” he said.

The three ICW researchers who worked on the report, Donal Fariz, Emerson Yuntho and Febri Diansyah, were unavailable for comment regarding the Supreme Court’s allegations on Friday.

Previously, the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) and the ICW were at odds over information presented in the corruption report.

AGO spokesman, Babul Khoir Harahap, said the court acquitted only seven defendants in the 741 corruption cases heard so far this year.

However, Babul’s data came from the office’s special crime unit and not the general crime unit, where some cases, such as tax officer Gayus Tambunan’s tax evasion case, were heard. Gayus was accused of money laundering but was acquitted by Tangerang District Court in March.

Previously, ICW researcher Donal Fariz said the NGO would never make claims in absence of solid data.

He added that ICW collated data from media reports on corruption case proceedings and relied on a network of fellow activists in various districts to cross-check data from the media. (gzl)