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orruption has been declared such an extraordinary crime in Indonesia that the state has established the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) on top of the other two institutions with prosecutorial powers — the Attorney General’s Office and the National Police — and the Corruption Courts distinctly separate from the regular District Courts nationwide in an attempt to eradicate this acute and ingrained social illness.

Still, various antigraft measures have apparently failed to prevent Indonesians from committing corruption. More and more people have been probed and convicted for corruption despite numerous public campaigns and the KPK’s enduring energy to prosecute implicated parties.

One weakness in the unending battle against corruption here is none other than the light jail sentences handed down to convicted corrupters. While the country has been repeatedly discussing the possibility of imposing the death sentence as the maximum punishment for corruption — a measure unlikely to receive sufficient support to be put into law — the maximum legal punishment as stipulated in Law No. 20/2001 on Anticorruption is a life sentence.

The latest court verdict against former tax officer Gayus H. Tambunan, his fourth conviction, was yet another example of how lenient our legal system in dealing with such “extraordinary” crime. The Jakarta Corruption Court on Thursday sentenced Gayus to six years in prison for four counts — accepting bribes, failing to report gratuities, committing money laundering and bribing police officers to escape detention. The six-year sentence is lighter than the eight years demanded by prosecutors in February, and much lower than the maximum life sentence as stipulated in the 2001 law. Apart from the prison sentence, the court also ordered him to pay Rp 1 billion (US$110,000) in fines.

Early last year, Gayus was sentenced to eight years in prison for tax embezzlement. He was later convicted on July 27, 2011, and ordered serve 12 years in jail for bribery, and convicted again on Oct. 24, 2011, and sentenced to two years in jail for passport forgery.

Although the total sentence for his crimes amounts to 28 years, Gayus will very likely serve only 16 years in prison, as the Criminal Code regulates that a defendant charged with several different corruption charges will only have to serve the longest prison sentence plus a maximum of one-third of that term. And as the longest sentence for him is 12 years, plus one-third of 12 years or four years, Gayus will serve 16 years.

The Court indeed took a bold step in its verdict against Gayus on Thursday in ordering the seizure of all his assets: A total of Rp 74 billion held in bank accounts and deposits in his name and in the names of family members, two cars, a house in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta, and 31 gold bars, weighing 100 grams each. The decision to seize his assets was a consequence of his defense lawyers’ failure to prove that they had not been obtained through corruption — the so-called “reverse burden of proof” required with moneylaundering cases.

Due to such lenient sentences, the country’s anticorruption campaign looks ineffective. The multiple corruption charges against Gayus have apparently failed to deter others from committing the same crimes. The latest case in point is the ongoing investigation of Dhana Widyatmika, also a young tax official, who is charged with accepting bribes and gratuities.

The key, again and again, obviously lies in the maximum punishment available under the law. And as a life sentence is the maximum sentence available, it should be the only sentence imposed on any corrupter if we are really serious about combating corruption.