he Immigration and Corrections Ministry has suspended multiple immigration officers at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on the outskirts of Jakarta amid an investigation into reports of extortion of foreign nationals.
Immigration minister Agus Andrianto said that the suspension came after the ministry received a letter from the Chinese embassy in Jakarta informing it of immigration officers at the airport extorting Chinese nationals over the past year.
“Once we received the data, we immediately relieved [the officials] whose names were listed in the letter [from the Chinese embassy] of their duties at Soekarno-Hatta. They are now under investigation,” Agus told The Jakarta Post on Sunday, without revealing what the letter said.
Agus said he would not hesitate to sanction these officials should the investigation find them guilty of extortion.
“If the [Chinese] embassy hadn't informed us, we wouldn't have known. With this, we are grateful that we could immediately take corrective steps. This serves as a warning [for immigration officers] to uphold integrity when doing their jobs,” he said.
Agus promised that the government would continue its efforts to digitize immigration services to make them more accessible, transparent and efficient.
In a report published on Friday, Tempo quoted a letter from the Chinese embassy which said that at least 44 incidents of extortion had been resolved. The letter said that the embassy, with the help of the Foreign Ministry, had coordinated with the immigration office at the Soekarno-Hatta airport last year and that around Rp 32.7 million (US$2,008) in extortion money had been returned to more than 60 Chinese nationals.
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