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corruption watchdog reported on Wednesday that the country had seen a decreasing number of corruption cases prosecuted by law enforcers as a result of the criminalization of several antigraft officials.

Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) found that around 550 corruption cases had progressed to the investigation stage in 2015, less than 629 cases in the previous year.

It resulted in a decrease in acquired state losses, which stood at Rp 3.1 trillion (US$231 million) last year, a significant drop from Rp 7.1 trillion in 2014.

ICW senior researcher Febri Hendri said the lower number of cases was due to the criminalization of Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) officials, which caused the resignation of two former commissioners, Abraham Samad and Bambang Widjojanto.

Early last year, the police named both men suspects in separate cases, following the antigraft agency'€™s move to prosecute high-ranking police general Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan in a bribery case.

A former adjutant of former president Megawati Soekarnoputri, Budi was on track to become the National Police chief at the time.

The police also reopened a shooting case implicating the antigraft body'€™s top investigator Novel Baswedan, which had been dropped in 2012 after a request from then president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Febri said no big fish were caught last year as the KPK, the police and the Attorney General'€™s Office (AGO) tended to work on lower and middle-level cases.

ICW data, collected through media monitoring and from law enforcers'€™ official websites from July to December, showed that most of the graft cases related to the misuse of state and regional budgets, with 134 cases. Another common motive was embezzlement in the procurement of goods, with 107 cases.

Middle and high-level officials from local administrations and ministries were the main actors in the graft, playing roles in 167 cases. Private directors, commissioners and employees followed with 98 cases.

One example was the misuse of social aid funds by Bengkalis regent Herliyan Saleh, which caused Rp 29 billion in state losses. The police are currently handling the case.

East Java had the most corruption cases, with around 54, totalling Rp 332.3 billion in state losses. North Sumatra and West Java came second and third with 43 and 32 cases, respectively.

The AGO was the most active law enforcement agency last year, handling around 369 cases, followed by the police with 151 cases. The KPK managed 30 cases.

The AGO'€™s special crimes investigation coordinator, Adi Sutanto, said the corruption cases handled by the institution were mostly related to procurement and that a number of cases remained unresolved.

'€œThis was due to difficulties in gathering documents, data and evidence. We must complete that first because it matters to people'€™s lives,'€ Adi said.

The police claimed that they had handled more cases than the ICW data showed, citing around 927 cases with state losses of Rp 437 billion.

The National Police'€™s Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim) corruption crimes director Sr. Comr. Erwanto Kurniadi said the different figures were the result of calculation methods.

'€œICW counted only the number of cases, but failed to calculate that one case can involve more than one suspect,'€ Erwanto said.

Erwanto added that the police did not easily progress cases from pre-investigation to the investigation stage. If sufficient evidence was not found, they preferred to drop a case.