Indonesia’s Graftbusters Battle the Establishment
Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) chief Abraham Samad. (JG Photo)
An inspector general of Indonesian
police had just withstood eight hours of interrogation on the night of
October 5, last year at the Jakarta headquarters of Indonesia’s
anti-corruption agency when a commotion erupted outside.
Investigators from the Corruption
Eradication Commission, known by its Indonesian initials KPK, had
accused Djoko Susilo of amassing land, cars, mansions and stacks of
cash. His arrest was an unprecedented strike against a police force with
a long-held reputation for graft in a country routinely ranked as among
the most corrupt in the world. The counter punch came swiftly. At about
9 p.m. that night, dozens of policemen descended upon the KPK
headquarters with one demand: hand over Novel Baswedan, 36, the
celebrated investigator who had led the interrogation of Djoko.
But the police didn’t reckon on a remarkable show of public support.
Hundreds of protesters, lawyers,
activists and journalists soon arrived to barricade the entrance of the
KPK building, summoned by text messages from an anonymous KPK official.
After a three-hour standoff, the police squadron left. Nearly a year
later, on Sept. 3, Djoko was sentenced to 10 years in prison and the
state seized $10.4 million of his assets.
It was a narrow escape for Novel,
himself a former policeman and now lionized as “supercop” by Indonesian
media, and once again, also for the anti-corruption agency. Since its
establishment in 2002, the KPK has become, contrary to all expectations,
a fiercely independent, resilient, popular and successful institution
that is a constant thorn in the side of Indonesia’s establishment.
Reuters spent six months examining the
KPK and their campaign against corruption, gaining rare access to the
agency and interviewing senior police officials, politicians, business
leaders, members of Yudhoyono’s inner circle and the president himself.
The KPK has won guilty verdicts in all
236 cases it has fought. Its arrests of cabinet ministers,
parliamentarians, central bankers, CEOs, a judge and even a former
beauty queen have exposed how widespread and systemic corruption is in
Indonesia. It has certainly made big-ticket abuses of power far riskier
in Indonesia.
But its success is becoming more costly.
Reuters also found an overwhelmed and underfunded agency that faces
mounting opposition from parliament, police and the presidency. The
KPK’s popularity has so far been its most effective buffer against such
attacks, especially in the run-up to next year’s parliamentary and
presidential elections. Any attempt to eviscerate the commission would
almost certainly cost votes.
“The KPK’s only friend is the public,”
says Dadang Trisasongko, secretary general of the Indonesian
chapter of
global corruption watchdog Transparency International.
The international business community is
watching this tussle closely. Executives surveyed in the World Economic
Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2011-12 said corruption remained
“the most problematic factor for doing business” in Indonesia.
The World Bank has said corruption
across the world costs $1 trillion. No one has done a thorough study of
the costs in Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country and one
of the hottest emerging markets with an economic growth rate of 6
percent. The Anti-Corruption Studies Center at Gadjah Mada University in
Yogyakarta put the losses to the state at $1 billion over the past five
years alone.
Corruption
Eradication Agency (KPK) graft investigator Novel Baswedan poses in his
office in Jakarta June 26, 2013. (Reuters Photo/Enny Nuraheni)
Gecko vs crocodile
The KPK has enemies because it is both
powerful and effective. Over a third of the agency’s 385 arrests since
its inception in 2002 have been of politicians. The KPK’s powers are
considerable: it can slap travel bans on suspects, go on asset-seizing
sprees to collect evidence and — the secret behind many high-profile KPK
arrests — wiretap conversations without a warrant.
But the KPK started small after its
creation in 2002. Early targets were mainly mid-level officials,
regional leaders and businessmen. That began to change when Yudhoyono
took office in 2004, vowing to deliver “shock therapy” to a
graft-riddled system. The KPK moved quickly to prosecute several major
graft cases, homing in on politicians.
In 2008, the agency ensnared the first
member of Yudhoyono’s inner circle: Aulia Pohan, a former deputy central
bank governor whose daughter is married to the president’s oldest son.
Aulia was arrested with three other deputies after former central bank
governor Burhanuddin Abdullah was convicted and jailed for five years
for embezzling $10 million. Aulia was sentenced to four years in prison
on charges in the alleged embezzlement scheme, which according to the
prosecution, aimed to bribe lawmakers to influence legislation affecting
Bank Indonesia.
By the time Yudhoyono ran for reelection
in 2009, the agency had expanded from a staff of 100 to nearly 400,
with thousands more applying for jobs.
Among them was Novel Baswedan, who
joined the agency in 2007 after 10 years with the national police, where
he had specialized in corruption cases. Novel, the grandson of noted
Indonesian freedom fighter and one its first diplomats A. R. Novel, said
he decided on a career in police work “in order to do good deeds.” In
his first case at the KPK in 2008, Novel nabbed the mayor of the
Sumatran city of Medan for misuse of the city budget. The mayor,
Abdillah, was given a five-year prison sentence.
The agents were having a big impact and
capturing the public imagination. For the first time in years, Indonesia
fared better on Transparency International’s country rankings on
corruption perception, leaping to 111th place from 133rd over five
years. And that’s when the KPK was thrown on the defensive.
Many of its agents came from the
national police, which is also empowered to investigate corruption cases
but is itself riddled with corruption, Novel told Reuters in his first
interview with the media. “There is a culture of corruption that is so
entrenched that it happens everywhere in the police.”
In 2009, the KPK began investigating a
top police detective, Susno Duadji, for allegedly accepting a bribe.
Susno famously mocked the agency for taking on the police: “How can a
gecko hope to defeat a crocodile?” The remark came back to haunt him. He
is serving a three-and-half year jail sentence for corruption and abuse
of power.
Five months later, police arrested two
KPK commissioners for extortion and bribery. The charges were dropped
after nationwide street protests and a Facebook campaign that gathered
one million supporters. The KPK also released wiretap recordings of
telephone conversations, which a court later determined showed police
officials conspiring to undermine the KPK. The agency came under further
pressure later that year when its chairman Antasari Azhar was arrested
for masterminding the murder of a Jakarta businessman. Antasari, who
pleaded innocent, is serving 18 years in prison. The Supreme Court
denied his appeal.
Chandra Hamzah, one of the two
commissioners arrested in 2009 and now a lawyer in Jakarta, said that
period was a defining moment for the KPK. “If the police had been
successful in pushing us out then, the KPK would have crumbled. They
came very close to doing that.”
A
student covers her mouth with tape during an Anti-Corruption Day rally
in Jakarta in this December 9, 2009 file photo. (Reuters
Photo/Beawiharta)
Accountable only to God
The KPK has continued to zero in on
parliament and the police, the two most corrupt institutions in
Indonesia, according to Transparency International. Over the past two
years, the agency has also targeted senior politicians in Yudhoyono’s
Democratic Party.
Former sports minister Andi
Mallarangeng — once a rising star in Indonesian politics — and party
chairman Anas Urbaningrum have been declared suspects in a graft case
involving construction of a sports stadium in Hambalang, West Java. The
KPK accused the two of taking kickbacks during the tendering process.
Andi was arrested in October on charges of abuse of authority and
causing state losses. Anas has not been charged in the ongoing
investigation. They both deny any wrongdoing in the case, which the
Supreme Audit Agency in September estimated caused state losses of
around $41 million.
The party’s former treasurer, Muhammad
Nazaruddin, was sentenced to seven years in jail in January for
accepting bribes linked to the construction of an athletes village for
the Southeast Asia Games in Sumatra. Angelina Sondakh, a lawmaker for
Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party and a former Miss Indonesia, was sentenced
in January to 4.5 years in prison for corruption and abuse of power in
the same case.
Since then, KPK investigators have kept moving into Yudhoyono’s inner circle.
In August, the chairman of Indonesia’s
energy regulator SKKMigas, Rudi Rubiandini was detained for questioning
on suspicion of accepting a bribe after investigators said they caught
him taking $400,000 in cash and a BMW motorcycle from an oil company
official. The KPK said he has not been officially charged and the
investigation continues. The Anti-Corruption Court in November began
hearing the case against the oil company official.
Yudhoyono now seldom speaks out in favor
of the agency he once championed. A week after the father of his
daughter-in-law was convicted of embezzlement in June 2009, Yudhoyono
echoed other politicians who claimed the KPK had grown too powerful: he
described it as “accountable only to God.”
At his state of the nation address in
August, delivered just three days after the KPK arrested the energy
regulator, Yudhoyono gave corruption only a passing mention.
Presidential spokesman Julian Pasha told
Reuters Yudhoyono’s support for the KPK has never wavered. “The way of
his thinking on the KPK is still the same. His commitment to support the
KPK actually never changed.”
In early October, the KPK went after
what the government calls the “judicial mafia” – a nexus that links
police, prosecutors, fixers and judges that purportedly puts a price on
practically anything in the legal system. The agency shocked even
Indonesians jaded by the country’s epic corruption scandals by arresting
Akil Mochtar, the chief justice of the Constitutional Court and seizing
almost $260,000 in cash. The KPK said the money came from bribes to rig
a court ruling over a disputed local election. Akil has not yet been
officially charged, a KPK spokesman said.
The widening investigation, which has
led to the arrest of a half-dozen other figures but no other judges so
far, is likely to become an issue in next year’s elections. The
constitutional court was set up in 1999 after the long-ruling
authoritarian president Suharto was toppled from power as part of
reforms intended to free courts from political interference. Much of its
work involves ruling on disputed local elections. The landmark
decentralization measures of 2001 gave significant powers to local
politicians making the stakes in local elections much higher.
Yudhoyono told Reuters earlier this year
corruption has proven harder to eradicate than he had thought. “I am
still not satisfied,” he said. “I am frustrated, I am angry, I am
annoyed.” He denied, however, that it had risen in his nearly nine years
in office. In Transparency International’s latest rankings, however,
Indonesia has slipped back to 118th place, putting Southeast Asia’s
biggest economy alongside Egypt, Ecuador and Madagascar.
A
policeman guards as a protester shouts slogans outside the KPK building
in Jakarta November 11, 2013. (Reuters Photo/Beawiharta)
Budget increase?
The KPK’s 75 investigators must sift
through thousands of public complaints each year to select the roughly
70 or so cases it can realistically pursue. The agency’s mandate is to
investigate cases of Rp 1 billion ($88,000) and above, so investigators
choose the most high-profile corruption cases in the hope it will be
enough to deter others.
Its high conviction rate might be the
envy of its counterparts elsewhere in Asia, but it’s only a drop in the
bucket in Indonesia, where graft is simply part of the fabric of
everyday life — from backhanders to traffic policemen to “facilitation
payments” to get anything done in the country’s bloated bureaucracy. The
police and attorney general’s office handle most of the routine graft
cases.
The agency is hoping for a giant
increase in its budget for an ambitious expansion into provinces, where
government funds and international investment has soared under
decentralization. This, however, depends on approval by Indonesia’s
politicians, who have been trying to curb the KPK’s reach, not expand
it.
“As it stands now, the KPK is a law unto
itself,” said lawmaker Desmond Mahesa, who has led calls in a
parliamentary commission to better regulate the KPK and freeze its
budget. “We have to tighten our grip and keep an eye on them,” he told
Reuters.
Parliament has already tried to do this.
In 2009, when the KPK was getting besieged by the police, Indonesia’s
Minister for Communication and Information Tifatul Sembiring proposed
amending the country’s anti-corruption legislation to limit the KPK’s
wire-tapping powers. The plan was shelved amid a public backlash.
“If not for public pressure, we would
have gone ahead,” says opposition lawmaker Eva Kusuma Sundari. Pro-KPK
parliamentarians such as herself do exist, but are “in the minority,”
she adds.
Some 700 employees are shoe-horned into
the eight-story former bank building designed for half that number. Most
of its windowless parking garage has been converted into office space.
Outside, tucked between cargo containers used to store mountains of
paperwork, are 12 holding cells for suspects considered a flight-risk.
Current inmates include a former deputy central bank governor.
In 2008, the Ministry of Finance
earmarked Rp 225 billion ($19.8 million) to build a new KPK headquarters
with space for up to 1,300 staff. Parliament stalled on approving it.
To shame their politicians, Indonesians launched a fundraising campaign
called “Coins for the KPK,” led by a local NGO, Indonesia Corruption
Watch. Civic groups and members of the public set up stalls across
Jakarta and collected over $36,000. They even received bags of bricks
and cement. Parliament finally approved the allocation in October 2012.
KPK Commissioner Adnan Pandu Praja told
Reuters he wants the agency’s budget to be fixed at 0.5 percent of the
national budget — similar to Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against
Corruption on which the KPK is modeled — to avoid the annual tussles
with lawmakers. Based on the 2013 national budget, that would mean
nearly a 15-fold increase to Rp 8.6 trillion ($745 million) from its
current Rp 600 billion budget.
Indonesian
police general Djoko Susilo looks to his lawyer during the delivery of
his verdict at a courtroom in Jakarta in this September 3, 2013 file
photo. (Reuters Photo/Beawiharta)
‘Like husband and wife’
While politicians have been mostly in
the KPK’s cross-hairs, its arrest last year of Insp. Gen. Djoko Susilo
was significant: he was the first senior police officer to be arrested
while on active duty. The KPK accused him of embezzling $3 million in
the purchase of driving simulators while he headed the National Police
Traffic Corps.
His interrogation at KPK headquarters on
Oct. 5 of last year came amid renewed tensions between the agency and
the police, who had earlier ordered the recall of more than a dozen
officers on loan to the agency — including Novel Baswedan, Djoko’s chief
interrogator. Yudhoyono later ordered the National Police to withdraw
the recall orders.
To ensure their future independence,
Novel and other seconded police have since left the force to become
full-time KPK staff. Novel says some former police colleagues regard him
as a traitor.
He said was not surprised when police
tried to arrest him at KPK headquarters while he was interrogating
Djoko. “On that day, I was particularly anticipating a threat [The
charges related to a 2004 assault case in which Novel had already been
cleared of any wrongdoing]. Of course, I was worried for my life,” said
Novel, the father of four girls ages 2-9. He and two other KPK agents
said they have received death threats via SMS, but he declined to give
further details.
The police downplay any rift. “We regard
the KPK as one of our partners in law-enforcement,” said Agus Rianto,
deputy spokesperson for the national police. “We are like husband and
wife. Even spouses clash sometimes, don’t they?”
