Camelia Pasandaran & Armando Siahaan, Jakarta – A team investigating allegations of bribery within the Constitutional Court to fix electoral disputes has uncovered indications that a court clerk and the relatives of a judge may have taken bribes.

Bambang Widjojanto, a member of the team, said on Thursday that the allegation was first made by Dirwan Mahmud, who claimed to have bribed court officials in exchange for a favorable ruling in a challenge to his victory in the 2008 election for South Bengkulu district head.

In January 2010, the court threw out the election results and disqualified Dirwan from running in a re-vote. The court found that he had previously served a seven-year sentence for assault and murder and was thus ineligible to run for public office.

Bambang said Dirwan claimed to have paid Rp 58 million ($6,500) in several installments to the clerk, identified as Makhfud. "We've already confirmed, and there's no denying that there was a certain amount of money transferred [to the clerk], as well as the title deed to a plot of land," he said. "However, these have since been returned."

But Makhfud's lawyer, Muhammad Asrun, denied his client had received Rp 58 million. "He only received Rp 38 million, but he returned it all after the court ruled against Dirwan," he said. "He only kept Rp 500,000 for cab fare."

Asrun said that Makhfud had identified two relatives of Judge Arsyad Sanusi, who was on the panel that heard the case, as also having received bribes from Dirwan.

He identified them as Nesyawati and Zaimar, the judge's daughter and brother-in-law. It remains unclear if either has been questioned in the case.

Bambang said his team was limited to uncovering indications of bribery, and could not take legal action against any of those implicated. However, he said he trusted the Constitutional Court would take the necessary follow-up steps.

"If there are ethical violations, a tribunal needs to be formed," Bambang said. "If it finds indications of a crime, it should report that to the KPK [Corruption Eradication Commission]."

Allegations of bribery at the court, considered one of the country's few remaining bastions of integrity, were first made by lawyer Refly Harun, in an opinion piece he wrote for Kompas daily earlier this year. That prompted Chief Justice Mahfud MD to order the lawyer to set up a fact-finding team to prove the allegations.

Refly said one of his clients, J.R. Saragih, the head of Simalungun district in North Sumatra, had paid one of the court's judges Rp 1 billion to uphold his victory in the election there in August.

He said the money was paid to Judge Akil Mochtar through his personal driver, Purwanto. The court went on to rule in Saragih's favor.

On Thursday, Akil denied he had taken any money, and said he would report Saragih to the KPK for attempted bribery.

"I only ever saw Saragih at the hearings," he said. "The claim that he bribed me was only ever made by Refly, who should have reported it earlier to the court. I was actually intent on reporting the pair of them to the KPK on Thursday, but Mahfud asked me to wait until Friday."

Akil said he would report Refly for concealing information about a bribery attempt. "I'll summon the district head who claimed to have given me the money and we'll force him to point out which judge he gave the money to," he added.

Mahfud continues to insist his court is clean, and on Wednesday said he would resign as chief justice if the fact-finding team proved otherwise. On Thursday, however, he said the revelations uncovered so far by the team did not fully support the claims that Refly had made in Kompas.

Mahfud also said he did not want the police involved in the investigation because "any case they work on gets dropped with them saying they can't track down the suspects."

In a related development, the justice and human rights minister, Patrialis Akbar, said the government was working on creating an ethics council that would monitor the Constitutional Court.

"The council members will be made up of officials from the government, the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court, as well as public figures," the minister said on Thursday. He added that an alternative would be for the Judicial Commission to keep tabs on the court's judges.

The commission is responsible for flagging any wrongdoing by judges in all of the country's courts, including the Supreme Court, but not the tax courts, which fall under the auspices of the Finance Ministry.

However, in a review of the Judicial Commission Law, the Constitutional Court annulled the article giving the commission monitoring rights over Constitutional Court judges.

Patrialis said his ministry and the House were currently working on an amendment to the law that would restore the article and once again make Constitutional Court judges answerable to the Judicial Commission.

"There should no longer be any institutions in this country that are untouchable by other institutions," the minister said. "This contradicts the democratic principle of checks and balances."