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recent study conducted by antigraft watchdog Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) has found that the Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) has failed to transfer to state coffers a total of Rp 13.1 trillion (US$1 billion) in restitution from graft cases it won in court.

ICW researcher Emerson Yuntho, who cited a Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) audit on the AGO'€™s financial report between 2012 and 2013 to support the finding, said on Sunday that Rp 3.5 trillion of the total restitution amount was from graft cases handled by the AGO'€™s specific crimes division while the remaining Rp 9.6 trillion involved cases solved by the civil crimes division.

Emerson said that the antigraft watchdog intended to reveal the graft cases from which the AGO should have collected the restitution on Tuesday.

'€œProsecutors have yet to collect a total of Rp 13.1 trillion from graft convicts, whose verdicts were legal and binding. The money should have been collected and sent to the state treasury,'€ Emerson said on Sunday.

Emerson said the ICW study found that a number of things contributed to the AGO'€™s failure to collect the restitution money from convicts, including the convicts'€™ efforts to flee the country before their conviction or their refusal to pay the restitution to the AGO.

The researcher said that restitution collection was a recurring problem that the BPK found annually in its auditing of law enforcement institutions'€™ financial reports.

The ICW urged Attorney General M. Prasetyo, a former politician from the pro-government NasDem Party, to instruct the AGO'€™s newly established anticorruption task force to focus on the return of stolen money to the state through the restitution mechanism and not just focus on winning a court conviction.

'€œThe public perceives that a prosecutor'€™s job is only to win a court case without considering stepping up efforts to return graft money to the state. This should become a new focus for Prasetyo in the future,'€ Emerson said.

Contacted Separately, AGO spokesman Tony Tubagus Spontana said he had not been briefed about the restitution matter uncovered by the ICW.

'€œI myself have yet to receive any information about it. Is it an investigation result? The BPK website might have such a report,'€ Tony said on Sunday.

As of Sunday night, Attorney General Prasetyo was not answering calls from The Jakarta Post to confirm the ICW finding.

The Indonesian Forum for Budget Transparency (FITRA) in 2012 named the AGO the most corrupt state institution as indicated by the total amount of state losses potentially incurred by the agency.

FITRA said that based on BPK data, between 2008 and 2010, the AGO potentially lost Rp 5.43 trillion, more than 25 percent of the Rp 16.4 trillion of potential losses from 83 government institutions. The watchdog said that the BPK had found 473 cases of irregularities within the agency.

In a bid to improve its reputation for graft prosecution, the AGO recently established a task force consisting of dozens of its best prosecutors to expedite investigations into high-profile cases.

Employing more than 9,000 prosecutors around the country, the AGO has been criticized for its perceived lenience toward high-ranking officials, whom it has rarely managed to send to prison.

It is often compared unfavorably with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), which has imprisoned many high-ranking officials, ranging from active ministers to an active Constitutional Court chief justice, with only 96 prosecutors, all on secondment from the AGO.

In addition to the AGO'€™s perceived graft-ridden image, President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo was strongly criticized by antigraft campaigners for Prasetyo'€™s surprise appointment as attorney general. Prior to his appointment, Prasetyo was linked to the NasDem Party, which was one of the political parties that supported Jokowi'€™s presidential bid.