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Budi's graft case taken over by police
The National Police confirmed on Tuesday that they have received the dossier from the Attorney Generalâs Office (AGO) of a graft case involving the one-time National Police chief candidate Comr
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he National Police confirmed on Tuesday that they have received the dossier from the Attorney General's Office (AGO) of a graft case involving the one-time National Police chief candidate Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan.
Following the handover, the case, which was originally handled by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), is now being investigated by the special and economic crimes directorate of the force's detective division.
'We are looking into the dossier to see whether we can continue with the case,' special and economic crimes director Sr. Comr. Victor Edi Simanjuntak told reporters on Tuesday.
In January, the KPK named Budi a graft suspect one day before he underwent a confirmation hearing at the House of Representatives as the sole candidate to be National Police chief.
Now-suspended KPK commissioners, Abraham Samad and Bambang Widjojanto, accused Budi of having received a total of Rp 90 billion (US$6.9 million) during his tenure as the head of the Career Development Bureau at the National Police headquarters from 2004 to 2006 through bribes and gratuities from officers pursuing higher positions in the force.
Although the South Jakarta District Court subsequently decided that the KPK had made an unlawful decision in naming Budi a graft suspect, President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo declined to go ahead with his candidacy and instead called on the House to instead confirm the alternative nomination of the current deputy police chief Comr. Gen. Badrodin Haiti.
The KPK was then forced to hand the case dossier over to the AGO in March.
Many said that the transfer was a ploy to let Budi off the hook.
Victor, the officer in charge of handling Budi's case, was also one of the officers who was assigned to arrest Bambang in January in connection with his involvement in an alleged perjury case. Bambang was arrested soon after declaring Budi a graft suspect.
When asked about the contents of the case dossier transferred from the AGO, Victor said that it only contained a copy of the Information Analysis Report (LHA) of Budi's bank accounts and held no other evidence or any statements by witnesses.
Separately, Badrodin declined to comment on speculations that the dossier handover from the AGO to the police would allow the police to drop Budi's case.
'Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow there will be a case exposé [between the police and the AGO],' he said, adding that the KPK leadership would not join the case exposé.
Meanwhile, Attorney General MH Prasetyo said that the case was handed over to the police for reasons of 'efficiency'.
'It will be effective if the police investigated the case as they had investigated the same case in 2010,' Prasetyo told The Jakarta Post, adding that it was the KPK that recommended the AGO to transfer Budi's case to the police.
'The police still need to do a lot of work for the case because our one-month examination found that the KPK had not collected enough evidence when investigating him.'
