Bribery issues filled public spaces last week, following the dramatic arrest of a top prosecutor by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). The media made it headlines, the people incessantly talked about it, and it should now lead to something bigger: reform in our law enforcement agencies.

Last week's arrest of Urip Tri Gunawan, the chief prosecutor investigating possible corruption in the Bank Indonesia liquidity support (BLBI) to now defunct Bank BDNI, only confirms the widely held notion that bribery is rampant among our law enforcers, especially prosecutors.

We often hear talk of prosecutors at the local level targeting and extorting local officials suspected of corruption. They treat these officials as their personal ATMs. If prosecutors abuse their power against small fish at the local level, how would they treat big fish in BLBI cases?

KPK officials caught Urip red-handed while he was transporting US$660,000 in cash he had just received from Arthalita Suryani at the home of Sjamsul Nursalim, owner of BDNI, in South Jakarta. The KPK declared both Urip and Arthalia bribery suspects. Kudos to the KPK!

Urip received the money only a few days after the Attorney General's Office (AGO) dropped corruption cases against Nursalim and Anthony Salim, former majority owner of Bank Central Asia.

When the AGO launched the investigation into loan scandals involving BCA and BDNI, many parties, including politicians at the House of Representatives, questioned the AGO's intention and sincerity, as both cases were already considered closed and the previous government had cleared both Salim and Nursalim from criminal prosecution.

However, with the arrest of Urip, the AGO is again under pressure to reopen the BLBI cases of Salim and Nursalim, which involved trillions of rupiah in losses to the government.

Salim at the height of crisis owed the government Rp 52.7 trillion, and he paid back with his assets in over 100 companies. But when the government sold the assets, their value had dropped to only Rp 19.3 trillion. Similarly, Nursalim's assets transferred to the government were valued at Rp 28.4 trillion, but then sold for only Rp 4.9 trillion.

Many attributed the losses to the crisis, and thus they are often dubbed the "cost of crisis", but there are also parties who see corruption and collusion in the transfer of assets to the government and their fire sales. There must be something wrong there.

As a start, the AGO should investigate the possible collusion and corruption behind the issuance of the criminal release and discharge statement by then President Megawati Soekarnoputri to the tycoons.

But before doing that, the AGO must clear its own house of corrupt prosecutors, because entering BLBI cases, as in the words of Attorney General Hendarman Supandji, is like entering "a jungle full of dark powers".

Therefore, the first thing the AGO needs to deal with is bribery against its own prosecutors. Bribery is indeed the hardest thing to tackle, at least when compared to corruption. While corruption often leaves traces, such as documents or bank accounts, bribery usually does not. Most of the time it involves cash payments, as in the case of Urip.

The AGO must first of all impose harsh penalties for those found guilty of bribery or those caught red-handed taking bribes, like Urip. But so far, the attorney general hasn't imposed any penalty against Urip. At the very least, Urip must be fired.

As an institution tasked with fighting corruption, the AGO needs also to be equipped with the power to tackle bribery, such as with state-of-the-art wire-tapping equipment like that employed by the KPK.

Next, the AGO could conduct an audit of its prosecutors' wealth. From there, the attorney general would have a clear picture which prosecutors are relatively clean and which are not. Only then could we expect a more credible AGO.

Let the arrest of Urip provide the momentum to start an overhaul and reform of the AGO, and hopefully it will inspire our political leaders to expand integrity reform to cover other law enforcers, the police and the justice system. Only then will our ten-year-old reform movement have a reformed guardian of the law.