Agus Rahardjo (JP/Wendra Ajistyatama)

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has just finished its busiest year, with the investigation into the e-ID graft case, which caused Rp 2.3 trillion (US$184 million) in state losses, among its high profile activities. KPK chairman Agus Rahardjo spoke with The Jakarta Post’s Kharishar Kahfi on the commission’s plan to resolve the landmark case.

Question: The KPK has gone through its busiest year as evident in the high number of sting operations (OTT). Are there any concerns that the commission was doing too much, but ended up achieving little?

Answer: The high number of OTT was a necessary deterrent that could be immediately felt. However, if you look into our work, graft prevention actually took up most of our budget. While we have worked on prevention for a long time, there has yet to be any immediate impact on the nation.

I have yet to feel that the whole nation pays attention to corruption or considers it a serious threat. However, I have a belief that corruption is the root of all problems, including the recent malnutrition and measles outbreak in Papua, as well as drug abuse.

Therefore, our prevention pattern should change. During the first two years of our term, prevention efforts went as usual — promoting an anticorruption culture among the young generation, or tunas integritas, and the community. Maybe it’s time to provide communities with tools to prevent graft after we tell them how to do it. This is to ensure that graft prevention continues in a sustainable way.

Despite the criticism, will the KPK make other breakthroughs this year?

We will keep doing our best. At the very least, the numerous arrests we made will raise public awareness and encourage participation in the fight against corruption. I cannot say whether there will be many more arrests, although there are so many cases under investigation. Hopefully, we can set our priorities.

Does money obtained through graft go to political parties?

We still have to look deeper into the matter. However, I personally think anything related to political corruption has to change.

In our graft prevention campaign we studied political parties, including their sources of funding. We have asked party leaders and administrators to watch their recruitment and regeneration systems. Everything we do should contribute to improving our political system.

Early in 2018, the KPK was said to be focused on several cases, including the e-ID graft case. What does the KPK expect from the approach?

For the e-ID case, we have suspects from several groups, including legislators, bureaucrats and businesspeople. We have taken care of suspects who are legislators. There are more suspects, perhaps, we are trying to dig deeper into it.

Suspects from the bureaucracy (former Home Ministry officials Irman and Sugiharto) have been convicted. If asked whether any higher figure will be implicated in the case, then we are still looking at the possibility.

We will not stop there. There are still lots of elements that we have to look at. More importantly, we are trying to recover as much of the state losses as we can. We are also in contact with the FBI to help arrest any suspects abroad and to return home assets they obtained from illicit practices.

Suspect Setya Novanto has offered himself as a justice collaborator.

We never work based on single sourced information. We always verify any information, data or facts that we obtain with other sources.

Regarding Setya’s request, we will not accept it entirely. It depends on what information he will share with us. If we have already found facts or information ourselves, why should we name him a justice collaborator?

We will also look at his consistency in helping us. We’ll see if he is consistent in uncovering new facts that contribute to the investigation.

But Setya is deemed as a key figure in the graft case, isn’t he?

Previously, he refused to admit his involvement, but now he is requesting the status of justice collaborator. It is simply a confession of guilt from him. He has moved 180 degrees, therefore we have to be careful.

As there are other big names implicated in the case, will the KPK chase them?

We have been working for 14 years. When people demanded we to look into Bank Indonesia liquidity loan corruption, we went for it. Now if they ask whether we will look into bigger cases, as long as we have sufficient evidence, we will investigate them and bring whoever is responsible to court. This is to create legal certainty and uphold justice in the country.

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