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fter being declared a suspect in a graft case involving the Law and Human Rights Ministry'€™s online passport payment system, former deputy law and human rights minister Denny Indrayana appeared to try to shift the blame to former minister Amir Syamsuddin.

Denny, who has been considered an antigraft activist, stands accused of abusing his power by directly appointing two online service providers, PT Nusa Satu Inti Artha and PT Finnet Indonesia, to run the payment system, also known as payment gateway.

Denny'€™s lawyer, Defrizal Djamaris, said on Saturday that Amir had been well aware of the project.

'€œThis payment gateway project exists because of a minister regulation, so there'€™s no way that Amir doesn'€™t know about it,'€ he said.

The regulation in question is Ministerial Decree No. 18/2014 on passports issued by Amir, who is a Democratic Party politician.

Amir has admitted that he issued the decree. However, he revoked the decree after the Finance Ministry deemed the project to be in violation of the law.

'€œ[The payment gateway] was set up because there were many public complaints about the slow service when applying for passports, but after a while we found that it wasn'€™t compatible,'€ he said after being questioned as a witness by the police early this month.

Meanwhile, Defrizal said his client had only acted as a supervisor in the project.

'€œHe was not the head of the team; someone else acted as the head. Pak Denny only supervised,'€ he said.

Defrizal added that the team tasked to carry out the project always reported any developments in the project to Amir.

The online passport payment service was launched on July 14 last year when Denny served as deputy minister. It was suddenly halted in October after it was discovered that the ministry had yet to authorize the start of the project.

Defrizal said it was strange for the project to be stopped abruptly when the Finance Ministry had already given the green light to the Law and Human Rights Ministry for budget approval.

'€œThe Finance Ministry responded by giving space [for the project to be carried out]. It never explicitly said this [project] violated the ministry'€™s regulation,'€ he said.

Several civil organizations have criticized the police for their move against Denny, calling it an effort to silence critics of the police, since Denny'€™s case emerged only after Denny publicly supported the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in its standoff with the police in January.

The police have denied the allegation and said there was enough evidence to charge Denny, pointing out that Denny had authorized the two companies to open a single bank account where funds from the payment gateway were to be deposited before being transferred to the state treasury.

The project cost Rp 32 billion (US$2.4 million), which the police consider state losses. Amir said the money was the total income of the project and that it had been returned to the state in full.

'€œThe money was in that single bank account for only one day,'€ he said.

Reports have been circulating that Vice President Jusuf Kalla orchestrated the prosecution of Denny.