T

he National Police are set to investigate a counterfeiting operation that generates electronic citizen IDs (e-IDs) and is allegedly working out of China and France.

'€œForgery is a criminal offense. We'€™re ready to carry out an investigation,'€ National Police chief Gen. Sutarman told reporters on Monday.

The police launched the inquiry after Home Minister Tjahjo Kumolo recently revealed he was aware of several counterfeit e-IDs that bore identical holograms to those on the original cards.

Tjahjo suspected the forged ID cards were made in China and France.

National Intelligence Agency (BIN) chief Lt. Gen. Marciano Norman said his agency would coordinate with several overseas parties to support the police'€™s probe into the case.

Home Ministry spokesman Dodi Riyadmadji said the ministry was still preparing a report on the fake e-IDs.

'€œWhen logging the report with the National Police, we will also hand over two fake e-ID cards as evidence,'€ he said in a telephone interview.

Dodi raised the suspicion that the e-ID card format and hologram design may have been stolen by Indian nationals involved in the e-ID project at the ministry.

He also clarified Tjahjo'€™s previous statement that the server of e-ID data was located in another country.

'€œThe server is in Jakarta and under our close supervision,'€ he said.

Tjahjo has suspended the registration of e-IDs until the end of December to conduct a thorough assessment of the program '€” including its security aspect, and to give greater room to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to look into alleged misappropriations in the project.

In April, the KPK named Sugiharto, director of citizen administration information management at the ministry, a suspect in connection with the Rp 6 trillion (US$518 million) project, which took place in 2011 and 2012 under the leadership of then home minister Gamawan Fauzi.

Sugiharto was charged with multiple articles of the Corruption Law and the Criminal Code for allegedly committing malfeasance, given his authority as the official in charge of the project.

The KPK said state losses in the case were estimated to exceed Rp 1 trillion, making it one of the biggest corruption cases ever handled by the antigraft body.

In 2013, graft convict Muhammad Nazaruddin claimed that then lawmaker and Golkar Party senior politician Setya Novanto, now House of Representatives speaker, as well as graft convict and former Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum, were implicated in the graft case.

Nazaruddin also accused Gamawan of nepotism, for allowing a company owned by one of the minister'€™s '€œclose colleagues'€ to win the tender. Gamawan denied the accusations.

Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) researcher Tama Satrya Langkun praised Tjahjo'€™s move to reassess the project.

'€œAside from giving access to the KPK to scrutinize the project, Tjahjo also needs to involve the antigraft body in building a more transparent system for the e-ID project,'€ he said on Monday.

Separately, Gerindra Party politician and the House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Fadli Zon expected the ministry to continue the project despite the irregularities.

'€œConsidering the huge investment for the program, we need to continue it while overcoming the problems. We currently don'€™t have valid data on citizens, which has led to the country having a voters list containing the names of even those who are deceased,'€ he said.