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oncerned with the greater involvement of corporations in the bribery cases it is currently handling, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) on Wednesday called on business leaders to establish graft prevention units in their respective companies to help the work of the antigraft body.

KPK deputy chairman Bambang Widjojanto said that around 40 percent of bribery cases currently handled by the KPK involved the private sector. In most of the cases, private firms paid bribes to government officials to obtain business permits.

'€œThere are cases where private firms become the victims of extortion [by government officials], but in some other cases, the private sector comes up with the idea to bribe government officials because the companies are not performing well and that is why they need to get special treatment by paying bribes,'€ Bambang told a forum in Jakarta on Wednesday.

The forum, organized by Transparency International Indonesia (TII), had the theme of '€œEmpowering Graft Management within Government and the Private Sector'€.

Bambang said the establishment of graft prevention units was meant to educate officials in private firms on what to do and not do when dealing with government officials.

'€œA number of ministries and government offices have set up the units and we expect that the private sector will follow suit,'€ Bambang said.

The recent arrest of the president director of giant real estate firm PT Sentul City, Cahyadi Ku-mala, in a bribery case related to housing permits, has badly affected the company'€™s shares in the market. The negative sentiment has also hit the nation'€™s third-largest lender, Bank Central Asia (BCA), after the antigraft body declared former Finance Ministry director general of taxation Hadi Poernomo a suspect in a case related to his controversial decision to grant tax leniency to the bank in 2004.

Bambang said the KPK'€™s graft investigation could not be blamed for the declining health of the firms.

'€œThat is something that has to be paid by the private sector if it is involved in criminal activities. That'€™s the reason why we urge corporations to establish graft prevention units to disseminate anti-corruption information within corporations,'€ Bambang said.

Bambang also said the antigraft body is considering the possibility of charging corporations in graft cases.

Meanwhile, TII Executive Board Natalia Soebagjo supported the KPK'€™s call, saying that the country had yet to have a system to prevent corruption in the private sector.

Natalia said that both the government and the private sector should join together to crack down on bribery and gratuity-giving.

'€œAll parties should be united in fighting against gratuities. Gratuities are a form of incentive, but if they are not regulated they could become a negative incentive. Gratuities create conflicts of interest and they must become the main concern of the private sector and government,'€ she said.

TII researcher Teguh Sudarmanto said that in many countries gratuities were considered '€œnormal'€, adding that both the private sector and the government must build internal mechanisms to fight gratuities and bribery.

Teguh said that building a whistle-blowing system, an asset-reporting system and financial accountability could strengthen efforts to eradicate corruption in the private sector as well as in government offices.