Dicky Christanto, Jakarta – Assistant attorney general for special crimes Marwan Effendy says the Attorney General's Office has this year recovered Rp 4.8 trillion (US$500 billion) in state assets, up by 39.2 percent from last year's Rp 2.5 trillion.

"We recovered this sum from the cases we handled in 2009, in the form of cash and property, such as land, buildings and factories," he said Wednesday. He declined to say whether the recovered assets had been submitted to the state treasury.

Marwan added the AGO had also recorded more success story by aking an increased number of cases to court this year. Of 1,533 cases of corruption investigated by the AGO in 2009, 1,292 were prosecuted, up from 1,114 out of 1,348 total cases last year.

Indonesia Corruption Watch's (ICW) Febri Diansyah, however, rebuffed Marwan's claims, calling on the AGO not to blow its own horn in the wake of widespread public misgivings about the office. He added a report from the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) showed the amount recovered by the AGO was much lower than it claimed.

Several other civil society groups have also called into question the veracity of the AGO's claims, with ICW saying the office had only recovered Rp 382 billion this year.

Febri said the public's trust in the institution was currently at rock bottom because many of its officials were involved in graft cases. "There has been a significant decrease of public trust in the prosecutors' integrity."