T

he Jakarta Police have arrested Rochadi Iman Santoso, the chief of the immigration office at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, for allegedly forging travel documents.

“The suspect allegedly violated Article 63 of the Criminal Code by forging travel documents,” Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said on Sunday. “Based on the allegations, we arrested him,” Rikwanto said.

Rochadi was arrested on Friday by officers from the Jakarta Police’s state security subdirectorate for allegedly issuing a fake travel document for Singaporean Toh Ke Ngsiong.

The document stated that Toh arrived in Indonesia on Aug. 5, 2009, on Tiger Airways and departed on Aug. 6, 2009, on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

Toh allegedly used the letter in a legal case involving Toh and local company PT Makindo, which questioned the authenticity of the letter and reported it to the police.

Upon checking with the Law and Human Rights Ministry, investigators discovered that the document was not genuine. Rochadi’s arrest was first stern action taken against what critics have called unscrupulous immigration officials.

The immigration office has been criticized for failing to implement travel bans levied on witnesses and major corruption suspects, including, for example, former tax officer and graft convict Gayus H. Tambunan.

Gayus received a two-year sentence for holding a forged passport in the name of Sonny Laksono in violation of the 1992 Immigration Law.

The sentence came in addition to his 10-year prison term for bribing a judge and a police officer, issuing inaccurate judgments on tax objections and conspiring to craft a document to illicitly unfreeze Rp 28 billion (US$3.05 million) in a bank account.

Gayus paid US citizen John Jerome Grice $20,000 for the forged passport, which he used to travel abroad after he bribed his way out of detention.

Maryoto Sumadi, the spokesman of the Law and Human Rights Ministry’s Immigration Directorate, declined to comment, saying he had not been officially apprised of Rochadi’s arrest. “After I learned of the alleged arrest from the media, I tried to contact Rochadi but failed,” Maryoto said.

— Bagus BT Saragih contributed to this report