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fter a higher education institution in Jakarta was found issuing fake degrees, the Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Ministry said on Tuesday that any civil servants possessing such counterfeit documents would face demotion.

Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform Minister Yuddy Chrisnandi said on Tuesday that the ministry'€™s inspectorate was examining the validity of its own civil servants'€™ degrees and would soon send a notification to every ministry to do the same.

'€œThe fake degrees hurt the government the most because it'€™s strongly related to the promotion and salary [of the civil servants]. [If a civil servant possesses a fake degree] then the government has spent money on nothing and on people who do not deserve it,'€ he told reporters at the press conference.

Yuddy explained that those found with fake degrees would be demoted one position as stipulated by existing laws.

During a surprise inspection of the International Management Institution of Indonesia (LMII) in Central Jakarta, Research and Technology and Higher Education Minister Muhammad Nasir announced that the institution possessed a short course permit, not a higher education permit.

This meant, Nasir said, that all degrees issued by the institution were invalid or '€œfake'€.

The institution claimed that it had been a branch of the Univeristy of Berkley in Michigan, the US, for the past 10 years and had offered online courses in undergraduate to doctorate programs.

However, the programs from LMII are listed as illegitimate by the states of both Michigan and Texas.

Minister Nasir officially filed a report against the LMII on Tuesday and handed over several documents to National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti in the hopes that justice could be served.

'€œWe have already handed over the documents to the police and we hope the case will be properly investigated. The fake documents are very unsettling for our country,'€ he said.

Nasir explained that the LMII had allegedly violated the 2003 National Education System Law and the 2012 Higher Education Law by issuing degrees without a permit.

The 2003 national education system stipulates that those who issue, help issue or use fake degrees will face a maximum prison sentence of five years or a fine of Rp 500 million (US$37,870).

Nasir added that a team from the ministry was evaluating the Institute of Economic Science (STIE) Adhy Niaga in Bekasi, West Java, to see if it had also issued fake degrees. STIE was the only other higher education institution that Nasir visited last Thursday.

However, he claimed there were a total of 18 higher education institutions nationwide that the ministry suspected were illegitimate and had issued fake degrees.

When asked whether or not '€œvictims'€ who were given a diploma by an illegitimate higher education institution would be compensated, Nasir only said that '€œwe will prioritize dealing with the higher education institutions first before we can deal with the victims.'€

Meanwhile, Badrodin said he appreciated Nasir'€™s efforts to report the case to the National Police and promised that the case would be taken extremely seriously.