Former junior tax auditor Gayus H. Tambunan, currently on trial for corruption and money laundering, had told police investigators after his arrest last March, and later confirmed in his court testimonies, that he had received the equivalent of millions of dollars in bribes and “fees” from more than 150 individual and corporate taxpayers.
The National Police, however, virtually ignored the testimony, causing allegations the police were protecting big companies, including three subsidiaries of the Bumi Resources group, which is partly owned by Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie and his family.
When the police finally moved last week to investigate taxpayers implicated in the Gayus case, concerns resurfaced that things could become much murkier and uncertain in the taxation sector.
This is because the police are not only notorious for being one of the most corrupt public institutions in Indonesia, but also simply lack the technical competence to analyze complex corporate tax documents.
We are therefore afraid the 151 companies whose tax payment documents were given by the Finance Ministry to the police last week could be vulnerable to “harassment” and threats of criminal investigations.
We think the police should not be trusted to handle the Gayus case alone because of the increasing evidence of police officers’ involvement in the conspiracy that enabled Gayus leave prison 68 times last year.
The manner in which the police last June handled the investigations of 23 accounts of senior police officers allegedly involved in suspicious transactions and money laundering involving millions of dollars simply insulted the public’s common sense.
Earlier in August 2005, Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) chief Yunus Husein revealed that his office had found indications of money laundering involving hundreds of billions of rupiah related to the bank accounts of 15 police officers.
Nothing came out of the reports from the PPATK to the police, even though the filings had been made based on thorough analyses of suspicious transactions by attorneys and accounting experts.
It is therefore most imperative that the analyses of the three large boxes containing tax documents currently held by the police should be conducted by investigators from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and selected auditors from the Directorate General of Taxation. The police involvement should focus on compliance with the code of procedures for criminal investigations.
Tax investigations involve complex analysis that requires specific skills — namely accounting and tax auditing. It is because of this high technicality that a tax court or tribunal has been established to mediate disputes or differing opinions regarding tax matters.
Involving special investigators and auditors from the KPK and tax directorate general would not only make the investigations more credible, but also could lead to answers to the questions as to how such a junior tax auditor as Gayus could have bilked millions of dollars in bribes from taxpayers.
