The KPK on Jan. 9 named Harun a suspect for allegedly giving Wahyu a bribe of Rp 900 million (US$65,568) with the hope of getting a seat at the House of Representatives through a replacement mechanism. Harun wanted to take the seat from Riezky Aprilia, who was in line to replace the late Nazarudin Kiemas. Riezky was the rightful candidate as she won the second-highest number of votes after Nazaruddin in the April 17 election, while Harun was in sixth position.

Harun, a legislative candidate from South Sumatra, allegedly funneled the bribe through a businessman named Saeful, who gave it to Wahyu’s trusted aide, Agustiani Tio Fridelina. Both Saeful and Agustiani were former PDI-P legislative candidates.

Despite revealing the case on Jan. 9, the KPK did not immediately conduct raids on locations that might contain supporting evidence, such as the PDI-P headquarters and the KPU office in Menteng, Central Jakarta. The antigraft body just obtained the raid permit from the KPK supervisory council — a new entity in charge of supervising the commission including granting wiretapping, confiscation and raid permits — on Friday.

“Looking at the case, I think that one of the main obstacles for KPK investigators to conduct raids regarding the case was the late permit from the supervisory council,” Transparency International Indonesia secretary-general Dadang Trisasongko told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday. “We still don’t know how the supervisory council manages its bureaucracy when issuing such permits, which has resulted in the delaying of the raid,” he added.

Dadang further lamented the situation, saying that any anticorruption agency was required to swiftly conduct its raids when handling cases, so that any document related to the case did not disappear and could be confiscated immediately. That requirement, he added, had to be realized by the supervisory council of the KPK.

“If the supervisory council keeps on delaying the bureaucracy [procedure] in issuing the raid permit, the public will not only criticize the lengthy process but also the accountability of the council,” Dadang said, adding that a similar situation could happen again in the future and hamper the KPK’s performance as a law enforcement agency.

Zaenur Rohman, a researcher at Gadjah Mada University’s Center of Anti-Corruption Studies (Pukat UGM), shared a similar view, saying the delayed raid — which took place two days after the KPK named suspects in the case — was disadvantageous for the antigraft commission.

This situation, he added, was exacerbated by the fact that the KPK was not able to seal PDI-P secretary general Hasto Kristiyanto’s workroom at the PDI-P headquarters on Thursday, fearing that another party who was involved in the case had removed related documents that could potentially become evidence in the case.

“This case was proof that the KPK supervisory council is only hampering antigraft investigators in performing their tasks. Why was the raid conducted days after the agency named the suspects? Why did the permit come late? This situation is so ridiculous,” Zaenur said.

KPK supervisory council head Tumpak Hatorangan Panggabean denied the criticism, saying that the body did not have any intention to obstruct KPK investigators in the graft case.

“The allegation that we only hinder the KPK’s investigators is not true,” Tumpak told reporters at the KPK building.

He argued that the members of the supervisory council had already agreed that all raid, wiretapping and confiscation permits related to any corruption case should be issued by the council, at the very latest 24 hours after receiving a request from KPK investigators.

The duration of the permit issuance, Tumpak said, was agreed by the council members during a meeting which was also attended by the KPK prosecution deputy earlier this month.

However, he refused to answer when asked why the supervisory council issued the raid permit too late — two days after the KPK announced the suspects. He only said that the raid request from the KPK investigators had to go through many procedures before being approved by the supervisory council.

Tumpak said KPK investigators were obliged to send their raid, confiscation and wiretapping requests in writing to the KPK investigation director, who would later send the requests to the KPK commissioners, who would deliver the requests to the supervisory council.

“I don’t want to comment on that [the issuance of a raid permit in the KPU graft case] as it’s a part of our strategy to resolve any corruption case,” Tumpak said. “All that I can say is we, the supervisory council, gave the raid permit to the KPK investigators within hours after we received the request,” he added.

Tumpak went on to assure that the investigators had conducted a raid at the KPU office on Monday after they received the raid permit from the supervisory council on Friday, but opted not to confirm whether the antigraft body would conduct a raid at Hasto’s office at the PDI-P headquarters.

“It depends on the investigators as we are only issuing a raid permit that is valid for 30 days. So during the period, the investigators can conduct raids anywhere based on our permit,” he said.

KPK acting spokesperson Ali Fikri also declined to comment on locations that would be raided by the KPK investigators after receiving the permit. “We can’t say anything since [the raid] is related to the ongoing case,” he said. (glh)

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