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Police won't back down in prosecution of Novel, Denny
In the spotlight: National Police chief of detectives Comr
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In the spotlight: National Police chief of detectives Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso poses at his office in Jakarta on Thursday. JP/Awo
The National Police will continue its probe into Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) investigator Novel Baswedan and former law and human rights deputy minister Denny Indrayana despite President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's order to halt the prosecution of all individuals involved in the country's graft eradication campaign.
The National Police's detective division chief, Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, said that there had been no formal decision to halt the probe into the two individuals.
'We will continue pursuing the case against Novel, we will continue all investigations. He [Novel] abused his power, which led to someone's death,' he told The Jakarta Post in an interview at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta on Thursday.
The police moved against some KPK commissioners and its investigators soon after the antigraft body named Police Education Institute (Lemdikpol) director Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan a graft suspect days after he was nominated as the next police chief.
Police decided earlier to reopen the case involving Novel, who was implicated in an assault case in 2004. He was accused of having shot a suspect when he served as the Bengkulu Police's detective chief.
In 2012, then president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ordered the police to drop the case against Novel, who was targeted by members of the force following the antigraft body's decision to name then head of the National Police Traffic Coprs (Korlantas) Insp. Gen. Djoko Susilo a graft suspect.
Aside from Novel, the police also recently pursued a case against Denny, who was suspected to have been involved in a graft case centering on the implementation of a payment gateway, an online passport-application service launched on July 14 last year when he served as deputy minister.
The program was suddenly halted in October last year after the ministry said that it had yet to authorize the start of the project. Denny has yet to be named a suspect in the case.
Suspended KPK commissioners Abraham Samad and Bambang Widjojanto were also named suspects in separate cases earlier this year.
Budi acknowledged that some had accused him of disobeying Jokowi, but he maintained that there was enough evidence to pursue the cases.
'Yes, President Jokowi had asked me to make sure not to trump up charges against any individual, not to make up cases. We have not been making up any cases, so there's no problem,' he said.
Earlier this week, National Police deputy chief Comr. Gen. Badrodin Haito said that the cases against Abraham and Bambang would not be halted completely, but only suspended for at least a month until tensions eased between the police force and the KPK.
Budi said that if any of the KPK commissioners or investigators objected to their suspect status they could file a pretrial motion with the district court as Budi Gunawan had demonstrated.
Later on Thursday, Denny turned up at the National Police headquarters for questioning.
Denny, however, bailed from the questioning session after learning that none of his lawyers were allowed to accompany him during the session.
'This is a clear violation of National Police chief decree No. 8/2009. Article 27 of the decree stipulates that police investigators can't question a witness without the presence of a lawyer unless the witness allows it,' one of Denny's lawyers, Heru Widodo said.
Speaking to reporters before leaving the police headquarters, Denny maintained that the payment gateway was a legitimate effort to improve public services.
He said that a report published by the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) in December last year showed that the Rp 32.4 billion (US$2.6 million) collected from the program was deposited back to the state and the program had not caused any state losses.
