On Tuesday, KPK investigators raided the Jakarta City Council building in Kebon Sirih, Central Jakarta, in search of evidence related to the alleged corruption.

“Whoever we summon as witnesses [we will ask] to explain the actions of the suspects we have named,” KPK spokesperson Ali Fikri told reporters on Wednesday, as quoted by CNN Indonesia.

Prasetyo is a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), while M. Taufik is a former Gerindra Party member and a former deputy speaker of the council.

Ali said the commission would seek to determine all uses of the rooms where investigators had found evidence.

The KPK combed through at least six offices within the council building, including offices belonging to Prasetyo and M. Taufik. The commission had questioned M. Taufik in the case last year.

Ali said investigators had collected documents and electronic evidence related to the approval of funds for city-owned developer Perumda Sarana Jaya to acquire land in Pulogebang.

The land in question was meant to be used for the city’s zero down payment housing initiative, one of the key policies of former Jakarta governor Anies Baswedan. 

In February of last year, an investigation into a similar land procurement scandal in Munjul, East Jakarta, resulted in the arrest of Sarana Jaya president director Yoory Corneles Pinontoan, whose company was in charge of the project.

Yoory was found to have marked up the price of the land in Munjul, resulting in financial losses of around Rp 100 billion (US$6.9 million) for the city. 

While the current investigation was not an expansion of the Munjul case, Ali said, he believed the method used was the same, “only that there was more money involved in the Pulogebang [case]”.

While the KPK has looked into possible suspects in the case, the commission will not be announcing the name of the alleged mastermind, nor will it detail how much money the city is believed to have lost, until the KPK has concluded its investigation.

In a statement, Prasetyo said he fully supported the KPK’s investigation and that the city council had nothing to hide. 

“The Budget Committee has always been transparent and their meetings have been open to the public. In this case, the executive branch is in charge of the budgeting, with the City Council running the process without intervening,” said Prasetyo, Tempo reported.

While the zero down payment housing initiative debuted with much fanfare in November 2018, with more than 2,000 people signing up for the program, the COVID-19 pandemic and corruption allegations meant the project was unable to live up to its promises.

Despite initially vowing to build more than 200,000 units, the city had only managed to finish 2,322 by the time Anies’ time as governor came to an end in October 2022.

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