Heru Andriyanto, Jakarta – Veteran lawyer Adnan Buyung Nasution is livid, saying the latest scandal involving client Gayus Tambunan – bribing prison guards to leave his cell – is just a trivial distraction.

But Adnan believes that while it may be trivial, it is dangerous because it is diverting attention from the substance of the former tax official's corruption trial.

In a wig and glasses that hardly provided much camouflage, Gayus was photographed by the Jakarta Globe watching an international tennis match in Bali on Nov. 5. Gayus has admitted it was him in the stands.

"This is a trivial case. There is a much bigger case out there which has yet to be uncovered," Adnan said when asked to comment on Gayus's trip to Bali.

The middle-ranking tax official last year was named a suspect for money laundering and corruption based on Rp 28 billion ($3.1 million) found in his bank accounts. He was controversially acquitted in March after prosecutors reduced the charge to minor embezzlement charge.

Former chief of detectives Comr. Gen. Susno Duadji said police involved in the case had accepted bribes, leading to an internal inquiry that ended with the arrests of Gayus, the Tangerang court chief, two lawyers, two suspected case brokers, two police officers and a tax consultant as suspects.

Considered one of the country's most respected lawyers, Adnan has said he would represent Gayus if he agreed to tell the truth and use his case to uncover the bigger issue of the judicial mafia.

However, while the police inquiry team has been criticized for excluding prosecutors, two other judges and two police generals from the list of suspects, a slew of cases relating to Gayus has cropped up, more distractions to the crux of Adnan's case.

Susno has been named a suspect in a two graft cases, with many viewing the charges as police retribution for his uncovering the Gayus case bribery.

In another development, the Attorney General's Office has launched an inquiry over suspicions that senior prosecutor Cirus Sinaga leaked the sentencing demand document to Gayus's former lawyer, Haposan Hutagalung, who then falsified the document to extort money from Gayus during the March trial in Tangerang that ended in an acquittal.

"None of this has anything to do with the core of the case," Adnan said. "We must not divert our attention from the judiciary mafia and tax mafia issues. He refused to comment further on the Bali incident: "That's a problem between Gayus and police."

Adnan, who is also an adviser to the president on legal affairs, warned of a repeat of the Tangerang trial because prosecutors again limited the case. The South Jakarta District Court has also stifled the case, not bothering to track the source of Gayus's huge fortune.

"The indictment should have been rejected. But we have reached the point of no return" Adnan said. "The Bali incident is nothing compared with the huge problem facing us."

Gayus has testified receiving billions of rupiah from, among others, three companies under the Bakrie Group, owned by top politician and tycoon Aburizal Bakrie. He said he had paid prosecutors, judges and high-ranking police officers billions of rupiah in exchange for his acquittal.

"So many things have happened that we forget the true story," said Danang Widoyoko, chairman of Indonesia Corruption Watch. "For example, we no longer question Gayus's wealth. We no longer pay attention to Edmon Ilyas and Raja Erizman," he said referring to National Police generals accused by Susno of taking bribes from Gayus.

Edmon and Raja were reassigned but not charged. "We need to return to focusing on combating the judiciary mafia and tax mafia," Danang said.