T

he National Police have said they do not have enough evidence to name former state-owned enterprises minister Dahlan Iskan a suspect in two graft cases relating to his tenure in government posts.

National Police detective division chief Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso said on Friday that documents compiled by investigators suggested that Dahlan had authorized an alleged fictitious rice field project in Ketapang, West Kalimantan, worth Rp 317 billion (US$23 million) during his tenure as minister in president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono'€™s administration.

Evidence also showed, Budi said, that Dahlan had authorized an '€œirregular tender'€ between state-owned electricity company PLN, of which he was then president director and state-owned oil and gas firm Pertamina.

However, Budi said, it was possible that Dahlan was not the brains behind either case.

'€œFrom the documents we have confiscated, we found no indications that he was the one who initiated the projects. But we need to dig deeper. We cannot leave it here,'€ he told reporters on Friday.

Although Dahlan had signed documents authorizing both the development project and the tender to run their course, Budi said, he might not be responsible for the alleged graft because he was not directly involved in the projects'€™ running.

'€œWe will still need to question him again about his relation to the documents he signed. We still can'€™t conclude how deep his involvement in the cases was,'€ Budi said.

In 2012, Dahlan launched a development project in Ketapang and promised that the 3,000 hectares of paddy field would expand to 100,000 by 2014.

However, a recent investigation concluded that no such development had occurred despite input of funds from state-owned banks BNI and BRI, Pertamina, state-owned port operator PT Pelabuhan Indonesia II (Pelindo II) and Jakarta-listed gas distributor Perusahaan Gas Negara (PGN).

Although the police have yet to question Dahlan in the rice field case, the media mogul was questioned on Monday as a witness in the irregular tender case involving PLN and Pertamina.

According to Dahlan'€™s lawyer Yusril Ihza Mahendra, the irregularity in the case relates to two different prices of diesel that PLN paid to Pertamina in 2010 to supply the former'€™s power plants throughout Indonesia. The initial price was higher than a new one made through a tender.

Yusril argued that the irregularity in the prices occurred because of the different purchasing mechanism that PLN and Pertamina had agreed on.

Separately, the head of the anticorruption subdirectorate I under the detective division, Sr. Comr. Ade Deriyan Jayamarta, said that the police had yet to determine state losses in the PLN-Pertamina case.

However, Ade said, the losses could be significant, as the case also involved PT. Trans-Pacific Petrochemical Indotama (TPPI), a company currently implicated in another graft case that had caused Rp 2 trillion in state losses.

'€œThere is an irregularity in the tender, as TPPI was one of the companies appointed even though it was financially unable to fulfill its four-year contract with PLN,'€ Ade said.