Bribe money, in all its colorful forms

It appears that the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has grown to be such a fearsome outfit that corrupt officials have become very careful in running their own operations.

Evidence of this is the increasingly creative, albeit not too subtle, ways of delivering bribe money.

In December, the Jakarta Corruption Court displayed evidence of corruptors’ ingenuity when it opened a brown cardboard box of durian, with an imprint of “Thai Durian”, containing Rp 1.5 billion in cash.

The KPK presented the box as evidence against businesswoman Dharnawati, who was charged with bribing two officials at the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry to rig a tender in her favor.

Two KPK prosecutors had a hard time catching their breath after delivering the box to the courtroom.

A witness testified that the money was later deposited in a safe at the office of the ministry’s treasurer before it was picked up by M. Fauzi, an alleged aide to Minister Muhaimin Iskandar.

In another bribery case, the money was kept inside a box of coconut cookies.

Former South Nias regent Fahuwusa Laia tried to bribe a member of the General Elections Commission (KPU) by delivering the money in a cookie box.

At a trial in December, a witness in the case, Saut Hamonangan Sirait of the KPU, testified that Fahuwusa once tried to bribe him with Rp 100 million to help seal his win in the 2011 South Nias election.

“The cookie box was covered with flower-motif fabric,” Saut said.

The bribe money was delivered on Oct. 3, 2010 when Fahuwusa was still in office.

Saut said he did not know about the bribe inside the cookie box, and that his assistant opened the container to try to taste what was inside.

Saut later reported the case and handed over the money to the KPK. Fahuwusa was sentenced to two years and six months in prison by the Jakarta Corruption Court last month.

In 2010, the KPK confiscated Rp 100 million in cash kept in a brown envelope that was wrapped in a newspaper and gave away in haste to a street vendor in Bandung after investigators arrested West Java Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) official Suharto and Bekasi municipality officers Herry Suparjan and Heri Lukmantohari.

Anti-graft activists pointed out that the way corrupt officials ran their operation indicated that corruption remained a backward practice.

Donal Fariz from Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) said that “to a considerable extent, bribery is still a primitive crime.”

“However, at the same time, these people do fear the KPK. So they try hard not to get caught by concealing bribes in the most bizarre places that they think are safe,” he added.

Teten Masduki from Transparency International Indonesia (TII) said that the drive to engage in corrupt practices did not match with sufficient skills as most actors were just too greedy.

“Many of them are new hungry players,” Teten said. “They play like thugs without strategies.”

Donal concured with Teten, saying that greed had got the better of corrupt officials, and that one thing was certain: bank transfers were no longer safe.

The KPK investigated 24 bribery cases from a total of 38 corruption cases in 2011.