I

t is a blunt fact that the public perceives the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) to be much more trustworthy than the National Police leadership, or even the House of Representatives.

For that reason, no amount of additional clarification given by the police would be enough to remove the dark clouds over the reputation of Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, clouds formed by the large and questionable transactions through his bank accounts and those of his son between 2005 and 2010.

Worse still, the political decision by the House'€™s Commission III overseeing legal affairs on Wednesday to endorse President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s nomination of Budi as the new National Police chief has put the President in a big dilemma.

If Jokowi goes ahead with installing Budi within the next few days, the nation will get a new police chief with tainted integrity who will continue to be castigated by the general public and become a lame-duck law enforcer. But if the President withdraws Budi'€™s nomination, he will severely damage his relations with the House, where his supporting faction is the minority, and his main backer the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

The police detective leadership made a big mistake in June 2010 when it hastily announced, without the endorsement of independent examinations by the KPK or the tax office, that the huge sums of money flowing through Budi'€™s and his son'€™s accounts were related to legitimate businesses run by the family.

The controversy over Budi'€™s suspicious transactions, which was capped by the KPK'€™s decision on Tuesday to name Budi a corruption suspect, was also a result of different opinions about money-laundering. Like it or not, once a bank account arouses the suspicions of the PPATK, the responsibility to clear the suspicion lies on the account holder.

The PPATK, which is in charge of enforcing the 2002 Money-Laundering Law, thoroughly examines and analyzes bank accounts implicated in suspicious transactions. Only when PPATK lawyers and financial experts are properly convinced that the transactions have strong indications of money-laundering will they file reports to the National Police, KPK and Attorney General'€™s Office for further investigation and eventual prosecution.

The money (allegedly over Rp 56 billion [US$4.43 million]) flowing through the bank accounts of Budi and his son between 2005 and 2010 were held to be suspicious by the PPATK because the sums did not correlate with Budi'€™s financial profile as a senior police officer whose official salary amounted only to between Rp 4-5 million a month.

Had Budi been greatly concerned about his integrity he would have gone the extra mile, asking tax auditors to clarify and crosscheck his annual income tax returns against the transactions through his bank accounts and the audited balance sheets of his family businesses.

Without clearance from tax auditors, no amount of explanations or clarifications from the police can straighten out what the PPATK considers to be suspicious transactions.