Anita Rachman, Jakarta – Democrat legislator Benny K Harman has accused the House of Representatives of meddling in the criminal investigation of the Bank Century bailout.

Benny, the chairman of House Commission III, overseeing legal affairs, said on Monday it was time for the House to put the case to rest and let law enforcement agencies do their job undisturbed.

He said the constant criticism by a House monitoring team that the police, the Attorney General's Office and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) were ignoring House recommendations was unwarranted interference.

"The House expects these agencies to investigate the case based on findings from the House inquiry into the bailout," he said. "But those findings don't constitute legally recognized evidence, and only the law enforcement agencies can determine what is or isn't evidence."

Legislators opposed to the November 2008 bailout blamed then Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati and Vice President Boediono, the central bank governor at the time, for what they deemed was an unwarranted move peppered with irregularities.

The Democrats, however, were adamant that the bailout was justified in light of the ongoing global financial turmoil, and resisted moves to hold Mulyani and Boediono criminally liable.

Benny said all three law enforcement agencies had so far concluded that there were no indications of wrongdoing in the government's handling of the Rp 6.7 trillion ($744 million) bailout, and thus "the case should be closed once and for all."

At a meeting between the House team monitoring the investigation and the three agencies in June, the KPK and the AGO said in interim reports they had not yet found any indications of corruption so far.

In response to Benny's comments, House Deputy Speaker Pramono Anung, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said the House had earlier identified at least 40 irregularities in the bailout, and chided the KPK, AGO and police for not following up on the House's recommendations.

Pramono said the decision to probe the bailout had been made by the House and thus any calls to drop it were tantamount to questioning the validity of its decision. He said that while the investigation was not going the way that the House monitoring team would have liked, it was still making progress.

Golkar Party legislator Bambang Susatyo, one of the most vocal opponents of the bailout, said Benny's comments were to be expected, given the Democrats' opposition to any move to investigate the bailout or the officials who authorized it. "Benny's leadership of Commission III must be reconsidered," Bambang said.