Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD, in his capacity as the interim communications and information minister, said the reasonable cost of building the 4,200 base transceiver stations (BTS) called for in the first phase of the project was actually some Rp 4 trillion (US$268 million), a fraction of the Rp 10 trillion that had been disbursed.

The calculation, he said, was based on a Development Finance Comptroller (BPKP) report he had received.

“Actually, for 4,200 towers, about Rp 3 to 4 trillion is enough. But the project was budgeted at Rp 10 trillion, then the money was spent, and it didn't turn out well,” he told journalists on Tuesday.

The BTS procurement project is headed by the Telecommunications and Information Accessibility Agency (BAKTI) under the communications ministry and has a total budget of Rp 28 trillion. By 2023, the ministry was supposed to have erected some 8,000 4G BTS towers in locations with poor connectivity, particularly in underdeveloped regions.

The project began in 2020, after Johnny G. Plate of the NasDem Party was installed as minister in October 2019. In the first phase, which had a budget of Rp 10 trillion, 4,200 BTS towers were to be constructed by 2021. The deadline was later pushed back to March 2022, by which time only a fourth of the towers had been constructed.

The significant delays raised suspicions of graft, and the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) said last week the alleged corruption in the first phase of development had resulted in some Rp 8.1 trillion in state losses, far higher than its previous estimate of Rp 1 trillion. The AGO has named Johnny a corruption suspect and arrested him last week.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has ordered Mahfud to continue the BTS construction project so that further state losses can be avoided. The government has already spent nearly one third of the project’s total budget.

Mahfud said he would seek ways to fund the construction of the approximately 3,000 towers that remained in the first phase of the project.

He said the government would also push the AGO to try to recover the state losses from the suspects in court.

“The [BTS] project will continue. But [the stolen state assets] must be pursued to recover as much as possible," he said.

Mahfud said the ministry would fully cooperate with the AGO and would accommodate any BPKP investigation of the ministry.

“If there are findings that have to be probed, we welcome and open the door as wide as possible," the minister said.

Also on Tuesday, the AGO named a new suspect in the corruption case, a person identified only by his initials WP and who allegedly has connections to another suspect, PT Solitech Media Sinergy commissioner Irwan Hermawan.

Iwan is accused of colluding with BAKTI president director Anang Achmad Latif, who allegedly created and manipulated rules to allow specific bidders to win the BTS procurement auction at marked-up prices.

AGO investigators have named seven suspects in total since January.