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Police insist on handling Budi's graft case
The National Police are maintaining they are the only law enforcement agency that has the authority to handle the investigation into a graft case involving Comr
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he National Police are maintaining they are the only law enforcement agency that has the authority to handle the investigation into a graft case involving Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan.
National Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said that based on a 2012 memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the National Police and the Attorney General's Office (AGO), the police had the sole authority to probe into the case as they were the first to handle it.
Rikwanto was responding to speculation that Budi's case had been transferred to the police force so that it would be dropped, a move that could pave the way for Budi to be nominated to be the next deputy police chief.
'Article 8 of the MoU clearly states that when it comes to corruption cases, only the law enforcement institution that originally launches a probe could take over the case,' Rikwanto said at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta.
Rikwanto was referring to a 2010 police investigation into Budi's allegedly 'inflated' bank accounts based on reports from the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre (PPATK). The police force eventually cleared Budi of any wrongdoing and maintained his wealth came from 'legitimate businesses'.
Earlier this year, the Corruption Eradication Commission (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.
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 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.
Meanwhile, another National Police spokesman, Brig. Gen. Anton Charliyan questioned the KPK's decision to name Budi a suspect as investigators found that there was insufficient evidence as the case dossier only contained a copy of the Information Analysis Report [LHA] of Budi's bank accounts from the PPATK.
Although the case dossier received by police investigators contained several witness testimonies, Anton said, the names of the witnesses were allegedly withheld by the KPK investigators.
'The AGO handed over the case to us because they had difficulty analyzing the documents,' he said.
Although Anton denied that Budi's alleged graft case would be dropped so that he could be nominated to be the next deputy police chief, Anton acknowledged that Budi was one of the strongest candidates.
Separately, former KPK advisor Abdullah Hehamahua said that the AGO made a historic yet questionable decision to transfer the case to the police.
'To my knowledge this is the first time that the AGO handed over a [graft] case to the police,' Abdullah said.
He said that after the KPK was forced to stop investigating Budi, the AGO was expected to independently continue the investigation given Budi's status as an active police officer.
On Tuesday, the AGO claimed that its month-long investigation into the dossiers it had received from the KPK found that there was not enough evidence to incriminate the police general in any case.
'The AGO itself should have halted the case in the first place [as it was within its authority to do so],' Abdullah said.
