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ollowing a court ruling on Tuesday that it was illegal for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to hire its own investigators, the National Police expressed its readiness to take over all the KPK'€™s cases, or send active officers to the antigraft body.

The National Police'€™s Detective Division chief, Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, said on Wednesday that his division was prepared to support the KPK by taking over ongoing cases handled by the so-called '€œindependent investigators'€.

'€œWe are ready [to take over], we'€™ll just wait for the KPK to ask for our assistance, especially if it is proven that the KPK'€™s operations have been violating the law all this time,'€ he told reporters at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta on Wednesday.

Budi added that if the KPK was unwilling to hand over the cases to his office, he would offer more police investigators to be stationed at the KPK to assist.

The three-star general spoke in response to the South Jakarta District Court'€™s decision on Tuesday, which declared the KPK'€™s investigation into the case of former taxation director general and Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) chairman Hadi Purnomo as illegal because the antigraft body had used independent investigators.

Most of them were hired investigators who had permanently resigned from their positions at the National Police or the Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO).

The sole judge of Hadi'€™s pretrial hearing, Haswandi, claimed that graft investigators could only lawfully carry out investigations if they continued to serve at their respective institutions as stipulated by the Criminal Law Procedures Code (KUHAP).

The ruling throws 371 KPK-prosecuted graft cases into limbo as they were mostly handled by independent investigators.

This does not take into consideration that articles 43 and 45 of the 2002 KPK Law stipulate that KPK investigators from other institutions are all temporarily suspended from their respective institutions.

'€œThe KUHAP is at a higher position [than the KPK Law] and must be followed. It clearly states that KPK investigators must be from the National Police. There'€™s nothing you can do about it,'€ Budi said.

The judge'€™s ruling was another heavy blow to the highly respected KPK. It recently lost two commissioners, Abraham Samad and Bambang Widjojanto, after the police declared them suspects in relatively minor cases.

Both Abraham and Bambang were regarded as responsible for naming former National Police chief candidate Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan a graft suspect in January.

Muhammadiyah University criminal law expert Chairul Huda agreed that the KPK must comply with the KUHAP and only hire investigators from the police force or the AGO. However, he also said that it would be a waste of time for the police force to take over the KPK'€™s graft cases willy-nilly.

'€œThe KPK should just hire more investigators from the police force who will then re-examine any evidence and retake any witness testimonies in the cases to prevent any '€˜wild'€™ investigators from continuing the investigations,'€ he told The Jakarta Post.

Separately, Judicial Commission (KY) member Imam Anshori asserted that although the KPK did have to comply with the KUHAP, the KPK Law existed in order to fill any legal holes that the KUHAP did not cover.

'€œSo a specialized law must have priority over a general law, which is the KUHAP in this case. If there is a clear difference between the general law and the specialized law then a judge must refer to the specialized one,'€ he said.
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'€œWe are ready [to take over], we'€™ll just wait for the KPK to ask for our assistance, especially if it is proven that the KPK'€™s operations have been violating the law all this time.'€