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ndonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) has found that Jakarta gubernatorial candidates supported by political parties received vast amounts of money from individuals or firms with dubious identities, which it called “ghost donors”.

ICW on Wednesday came to the Jakarta Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu Jakarta) to report the candidates’ alleged campaign finance violations.

According to the graft watchdog, Surakarta Mayor Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, who is supported by the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the Great Indonesia Movement (Gerindra) Party, received Rp 1.75 billion (US$187,250) from dubious sources. Meanwhile, it said that the amount of alleged illegal donations given to the candidate backed by the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), Hidayat Nurwahid, had reached Rp 2.28 billion.

South Sumatra Governor Alex Noerdin, who is supported by the Golkar Party, the United Development Party (PPP) and the Prosperous Peace Party (PDS), received grants of “goods and services” worth Rp 3.36 billion from the three
political parties that support him.

“The grants are suspicious because Alex’s campaign team did not provide details. This is different with Faisal Basri, who provides details on his grants of goods and services that, according to him, includes things such as banners and posters,” ICW researcher Apung Widadi said on Wednesday.

In its research, added Apung, ICW also found that many of Hidayat’s “ghost donors” were in fact PKS lawmakers in the House of Representatives. “Each [of the lawmakers] gave donations of Rp 50 million to him [...] but they did not provide their tax numbers,” he said.

ICW noted that compared to candidates with affiliation to political parties, the independent candidates were relatively clean. According to ICW’s findings, the campaign funds of independent gubernatorial hopeful Hendardji Soepandji all came from verified sources, meaning the donors include their names, addresses, and tax numbers. Campaign donations for another independent candidate, Faisal Basri, meanwhile, only included two “ghost donors” contributing Rp 4.8 million.

Faisal’s tally is relatively small compared to the gubernatorial contenders backed by political parties. In Fauzi Bowo’s campaign finance report, for example, ICW found 255 “ghost donors” provided a total of Rp 2.34 billion for the incumbent’s campaign activities.

Kahfi Siregar, the head of media center for Fauzi Bowo’s campaign team, said that his team had followed all the legal procedures in submitting their financial reports.

“The source of campaign funds must be submitted to the KPU Jakarta [The Jakarta General Election Commision], not to ICW,” he said on Wednesday, refusing to comment further as Fauzi’s campaign team “had to look to ICW’s report first before making any official statement”.

Responding to ICW’s visit to his office, Panwaslu chairman Ramdansyah Bakir said that his committee would issue letters reminding the candidates to verify the sources of their campaign funds.

Ramdansyah, however, conceded that the Panwaslu was still unable take stern action against specific candidates, noting that a campaign violation only occurs when a candidate has already spent the money coming from dubious sources.

“Imagine that an unidentified person transfers you money but you don’t know it. Can I say that you are wrong if you don’t even know that the transfer ever took place?” he told The Jakarta Post.

“Panwaslu, therefore, will investigate and look thoroughly into this issue after we receive the reports on the amount of money that the candidates have spent,” he added.

KPU Jakarta requires all six gubernatorial candidates to submit their financial reports on campaign-related activities three times — on June 23, July 8 and July 14. The first and the second reports are designed to reveal the origins of the candidates’ campaign funds, while the third report details their spending.

The KPU Jakarta will assign six independent accounting firms, each of which will be tasked to audit the financial reports of one specific candidate. The poll body promised to reveal the audit results on July 27, on the condition that no lawsuit had been filed at the Constitutional Court against the election’s outcome.

According to Article 32 of the 2004 General Elections Law, the KPU Jakarta can disqualify candidates who are proven to have spent money that came from “ghost donors” who failed to provide their names, addresses and tax numbers.