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orruption Eradication Commission (KPK) deputy chairman Busyro Muqoddas has lambasted President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) for his remarks on the Bank Century case, which he said could jeopardize legal proceedings on the case at the Jakarta Corruption Court.

'€œThe discourse raised by Yudhoyono that '€˜a policy cannot be prosecuted'€™ should be suspected as an effort to derail the legal proceedings of one of the country'€™s biggest corruption cases in history,'€ Busyro said at a discussion in Jakarta on Tuesday.

Earlier, during a dinner attended by dozens of chief editors in Jakarta, Yudhoyono emphasized that Vice President Boediono, who was the Bank Indonesia (BI) governor when the alleged crime took place, could not be prosecuted for agreeing to the policy to bail out ailing Bank Century in 2008.

Yudhoyono said that prosecuting a policy would make public officials reluctant to make good policies to support development.

'€œIt will cause fear and dilemma among state officials when making policies under such conditions,'€ Yudhoyono said at the March 10 dinner.

Busyro said there was no way that policies would not be prosecuted as it had become common for state officials to make policies as safety measures to justify their corrupt practices.

'€œRecently, we found a high incidence of such policies in the banking and financial sectors. Policies are especially prepared to justify actions to steal state money for individuals and corporations,'€ Busyro said.

This condition was a legacy of the New Order regime that was getting worse, he added.

He said public officials now made policies as pretexts to steal taxpayers'€™ money because the KPK had intensified efforts to catch officials accepting bribes.

Busyro cited the Hambalang sports complex project, which he said was a pretext by corrupt officials to embezzle state money for political purposes.

'€œThe ballooning budget from Rp 300 billion [US$26.51 million] to Rp 2.5 trillion proved that there was a hidden agenda behind the project,'€ he said.

The KPK investigation into the Hambalang case revealed that the project was marred by irregularities. It was alleged that money from the project was channeled to a number of individuals and politicians to fund Yudhoyono'€™s Democratic Party'€™s congress in 2010 in Bandung, West Java.

Earlier, former Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum alleged that bogus people had been listed as donors for the congress but that the money had come from the Bank Century bailout.

The antigraft body said it would investigate any information about the case.