T

he regent of East Kalimantan’s Kutai Kartanegara, Rita Widyasari, 43, has denied any involvement in a graft
scandal.

On Tuesday, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) named Rita as a suspect in a case related to illicit gratuity.

KPK deputy chairman Laode Muhammad Syarif confirmed that Rita was named as a suspect on Tuesday, but refused to reveal more information, including the details of the case in which she was allegedly implicated.

Rita’s name came to light after antigraft busters raided her office at the Kutai Kertanegara administration’s secretariat building in Tenggarong on Tuesday morning. The regent, who is a Golkar Party member, was not present when the raid took place.

In July, she was questioned at KPK headquarters in Jakarta in relation to an investigation into an alleged graft case. At the time, she stayed tight-lipped, declining to comment.

Rita, once a fellow at Harvard University’s Executive Education Training short program, is serving her second term as the regent in Kutai Kartanegara, after her victory in the local elections in 2015.

In May, Golkar gave her the nod to run in the East Kalimantan gubernatorial race in the local elections next year.

She has become the second regent from Kutai Kertanegara, one of the most resource-rich regencies in the country, who has been implicated in a graft case, following in the footsteps of her father, the late regent Syaukani Hasan Rais.

In 2006, the antigraft body named Rita’s father as a suspect in an alleged corruption scandal that centered around a botched attempt to acquire land for the construction of an airport in the regency, causing Rp 15 billion (US$1.11 million) in state losses. At the time of the investigation, Syaukani sat as the Kutai Kartanegara regent for his second tenure.

He was found guilty by the anti-corruption court and sentenced to more than two years behind bars. This was later lengthened to six years after his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2008.

However, the then-President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono granted Syaukani a controversial presidential pardon in 2011 due to the his declining health.

Rita is the sixth Golkar politician to be implicated in alleged graft cases in the last two months.

The latest occurred on Sunday when the KPK named Banten Cilegon Mayor Tubagus Iman Ariyadi as a suspect in an alleged bribery case related to an environmental impact analysis (Amdal) for the construction of a shopping mall in the city.

KPK spokesman Febri Diansyah refused to elaborate about Rita’s alleged corruption case, saying that it was “one of the old cases [handled by the KPK].”

“We hope investigators have completed their jobs there [in the regency] by the time we will make an announcement on Thursday,” Febri told reporters on Wednesday.

Local non-governmental organizations have raised suspicions and protested about alleged mining mismanagement in the resource-rich regency while Rita was in office.

In 2014, Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam) East Kalimantan lodged a public information dispute against Rita and her administration with the East Kalimantan Public Information Commission, asking the commission to order her to disclose information on regency budget expenditure on mining activities.