Easy reading: Graft suspect Gayus Halomoan Tambunan reads a book while waiting at his trial at the South Jakarta District Court last week. The complicated financial transactions and protracted police probe into his case means the source of most of the money he illegally gained remains murky.JP/Nurhayati Recent revelations of judicial mafia in the Gayus Tambunan probe prompted questions over the police’s credibility regarding wealthy crime suspects and their money, activists said.
Three employees of a private bank testified last month at the bribery trial of Gayus Tambunan that they could not do much when investigating the gap between the police’s statement and the real amount of money in Gayus’ account. Police stated there was more than Rp 300 million (US$33,333) in the account when in fact the total was only Rp 16 million.
Bank official Indah Ismawati said she felt intimidated when police officers came to the bank presenting a confiscation warrant for her to sign. “They said if I didn’t sign I would not be helping the case,” she said.
Doubts surfaced again over the credibility of the National Police in following up a tip from the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK).
Indonesia Police Watch (IPW) chairman Neta Pane said the police’s corrupt mentality was the likely cause of abuse of power when handling cases from the PPATK. “Most PPATK reports have not been properly investigated by the police. We also heard information that they often treated culprits in PPATK reports like they did with Gayus,” he said.
As of November 2010 the PPATK has uncovered 62,197 suspicious financial transactions. “We received about 2,000 reports almost every month,” PPATK chairman Yunus Husein recently said.
The PPATK analyzes every report and hands over those allegedly linked with criminal offenses to the police. About 40 percent of the reports handed over to the police were related to corruption. However, according to data gathered by Transparency International Indonesia (TII), only 8 percent of the reports were properly investigated by the police.
“What about the remaining 92 percent? What happened to the culprits implicated in the reports? What happened to their money declared suspicious by the PPATK? Isn’t it possible that the police extorted them so they could escape legal charges, just like what happened with Gayus?” TII secretary general Teten Masduki said.
The police were not considered transparent, while on the other hand the PPATK and bank officials seemed to give the police a wide berth in handling frozen assets, he added.
A fitting example of conflict of interest was evident when the PPATK earlier this year found suspicious transactions worth tens of millions of dollars in the bank accounts of 23 senior police officers, he said.
The police announced after a few weeks of investigation that only two instances were found to hold strong criminal evidence, while 21 other accounts were clarified as legitimate because the money was “legally” earned through the legitimate businesses of the families of the account holders.
Neta acknowledged the new revision of the Anti-Money Laundering Law still prohibited the PPATK from disclosing the substance of the reports. “However, the PPATK can at least question the police if their reports are not followed up properly,” he said.
Bank officials also seemed to be reluctant to question police orders to freeze, or unfreeze, certain accounts.
Both Neta and Teten agreed the House of Representatives should have expanded PPATK authorities in the revision of the Anti-Money Laundering Law to charge money laundering and corruption criminals and leave no space for the police to misuse PPATK reports.
“It would be better if the PPATK not only has the power to accept and examine reports from financial institutions, but also to investigate and freeze suspicious accounts, not necessarily pending police actions,” Teten said.
The House of Representatives passed the revision of the Anti-Money Laundering Law in October and granted investigative authorities to five other law enforcement bodies, including the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
