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No stone unturned
It is worth emphasizing here that the suspects needed a certain level of political leverage to give them the confidence to commit the alleged crime.
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Allegations against Johnny G. Plate. (Prosecutors’ indictment/JP/Dio Suhenda/Hengky Wijaya)
C
orruption is never a one-person job. It takes at least two people for bribery to occur. Certainly, many more are required to embezzle state funds on a large scale.
In the last two decades, we have seen high-profile corruption cases filling this paper’s front pages. Corruption is so deeply entrenched in our political institutions that we have coined the phrase korupsi berjamaah (collective corruption) to better, if not more accurately, describe some of those scandals, as if other acts of corruption elsewhere were carried out individually and in solitude.
The graft case surrounding the 4G base transceiver station (BTS) project, which allegedly cost the state Rp 8 trillion (US$788.6 million), is one of the cases that certainly fit the aforementioned term. It is no ordinary graft case, given the scale of the estimated state losses and the political stature of the people allegedly involved in it. By comparison, the e-ID graft scandal, which “only” cost the state Rp 2.3 trillion, implicated dozens of powerful politicians, including former House of Representatives speaker Setya Novanto, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the case.
It is hard to miss a pattern in all these cases. The greater the state funds that are plundered in an act of corruption, the more people are involved in the conspiracy. The higher the stakes, the more powerful the people become complicit in the crime.
The Attorney General's Office (AGO) is in the spotlight for taking on the BTS graft case. It has so far charged two government officials in the case: former communications and information minister Johnny G. Plate and Telecommunication and Information Accessibility Agency (BAKTI) head Anang Achmad Latif. It has also pressed charges against one academic, identified as Yohan Suryanto, and five businessmen, namely Galubang Menak, Mukti Ali, Irwan Hermawan, Windy Purnama and Muhammad Yusrizki, for their respective alleged roles in the high-profile graft scandal.
It is unlikely that the people involved worked alone in their scheme to misappropriate state funds for the BTS project. It is worth emphasizing here that the suspects needed a certain level of political leverage to give them the confidence to commit the alleged crime.
Johnny, for instance, is a member of the NasDem Party, one of the parties within the ruling coalition. One of the suspects, Yusrizki, is the president director of PT Basis Utama Prima, a company reportedly owned by Hapsoro “Happy” Sukmohadi, the husband of House speaker and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) politician Puan Maharani. Arsjad Rasjid, the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KADIN), is reportedly a minority shareholder in the company.
Furthermore, the AGO has revealed that there had been an attempt to prevent law enforcers from investigating the case. It is claimed that Irwan had paid billions of rupiah to certain people, including Youth and Sports Minister Dito Ariotedjo and Nistra Yohan, an aide of a Gerindra Party lawmaker, to impede the probe into the case. Dito is a politician from the Golkar Party who was serving as a special staffer to Coordinating Economic Minister Airlangga Hartarto at the time of the BTS graft scandal.
In another twist, the AGO said it is now planning to summons Adamsyah Wahab, a former Democratic Party legislative candidate, following allegations that he laundered BTS graft money that he received from Yusrizki.
It remains to be seen if the AGO will be able to do its job well in handling the politically charged case, given its own political baggage. Attorney General ST Burhanuddin is the brother of senior PDI-P politician TB Hasanuddin.
Concerns have been raised whether the AGO is impartial enough to handle the case, especially when the nation is gearing up for the presidential election, in which NasDem has nominated former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan against the wishes of the ruling coalition.
We believe that everyone should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. The AGO must leave no stone unturned to ensure that justice is upheld, and to quash any suspicions that it is cherry-picking its targets in its war on corruption.
