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Arrest deals further blow to legislative body
Irman Gusman - Antara/Yudhi MahatmaThe weekend arrest of Regional Representatives Council (DPD) speaker Irman Gusman over alleged bribery has further tainted the image of the country’s legislative branch, which has seen dozens of its members jailed for corruption in recent years
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Irman Gusman - Antara/Yudhi Mahatma
The weekend arrest of Regional Representatives Council (DPD) speaker Irman Gusman over alleged bribery has further tainted the image of the country’s legislative branch, which has seen dozens of its members jailed for corruption in recent years.
Investigators from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) arrested Irman in a sting operation in the early hours of Saturday at his private residence in Central Jakarta along with three other individuals: director of trading firm CV Semesta Berjaya Xaveriandy, his wife Memi and his brother Willy Sutanto.
Soon after the arrest, the KPK named Irman, a Democratic Party senior politician, a suspect for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rp 100 million (US$7,600) in return for his services in recommending an increased quota on imported sugar to West Sumatra to the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) to allow Xaveriandy’s firm to join the import program.
“Our investigators collected solid information before we went to IG’s [Irman Gusman’s] house and made the arrest,” KPK deputy chairman Laode Muhammad Syarif said on Sunday.
Laode also said investigators had evidence that Irman had called a Bulog official to make the recommendation.
Irman is not the first head of a state institution to be nabbed by the KPK for graft.
In 2013, the anticorruption body arrested then Constitutional Court chief Akil Mochtar at his private residence for accepting bribes worth S$284.050 and $22.000 to influence a legal process related to local election fraud.
As for members of legislative bodies, this year the KPK has arrested at least four lawmakers in graft cases.
In June, the KPK arrested another Democratic Party politician, I Putu Sudiartana, as part of a bribery case.
Earlier this year, the antigraft body arrested Damayanti Wisnu Putranti of the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) faction in a graft case related to a construction project.
Her colleagues at House of Representatives Commission V, namely Budi Supriyanto of the Golkar Party faction and Andi Taufan Tiro of the National Mandate Party (PAN) faction, have also been named suspects in the case.
Surveys conducted by various pollsters have found that legislative bodies, especially the DPD and the House, were the least trusted institutions in the country.
A study by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) early this month showed that both institutions were considered the most untrustworthy state institutions. Scoring a lower satisfaction rate than the other 12 state institutions examined in the survey, almost 40 percent of the 1,000 respondents considered the DPD and House to lack integrity. Meanwhile, 67.5 percent of respondents said they were dissatisfied with the work of legislative bodies and the House in particular.
Contacted separately, Irman’s attorney Tommy Singh said his client was not a junior politician who would accept such a small amount of cash as a bribe.
“The amount is too small. This is not his caliber,” Tommy told reporters.
Tommy also said Irman’s recommendation to Bulog was optional.
“I can recommend that you stay at the Marriott Hotel, for example. It is up to you whether or not you follow up on my recommendation. It is the same thing [with this case],” he told The Jakarta Post.
