Anita Rachman, Jakarta – Legislators have blamed the lack of prosecution in the Bank Century bailout on the refusal of law-enforcement agencies to act on recommendations offered by the House of Representatives.

Mahfudz Siddiq, a spokesman for the House team monitoring the three separate probes by the National Police, the Attorney General's Office and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), said the authorities had only looked into the possibility of general crime, fraud, embezzlement and money-laundering.

"But the follow-up into the corruption angle by the KPK has not been done optimally," he said on Thursday. "As such, the corruption aspect will get our attention in the next monitoring period."

Also on Thursday, the House agreed to extend the team's mandate for another year. The team was set up in March to keep tabs on the probes into the Rp 6.7 trillion ($744 million) bailout of the bank in 2008, following a resolution adopted by the House that the bailout was unjustified and its mechanism flawed.

Mahfudz said even after 29 meetings in the past seven months with the police, AGO and KPK, the results of the investigation were "still less than agreeable."

"The law-enforcement process is slow and stagnant," he said. "Even after summoning 137 witnesses, the KPK has yet to do a follow-up. There has yet to be a legal conclusion."

Mahfudz, from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), also criticized the authorities' efforts to recover assets embezzled by Century executives and stashed overseas. He added that in the future, the House and the government must set up a clear system and timetable for how to go about recovering such assets.

He also said future House monitoring teams should be privy to forensic audits commissioned by the government in similar cases. "After the long inquiry process, voting on a resolution and now seven months of monitoring the investigation, I think we have the right to feel disappointed."

Pramono Anung, a House deputy speaker from the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said that of the three agencies probing the case, the police and the AGO had done a good job, "but not the KPK."

He said the House had identified at least 40 irregularities in the bailout, yet the KPK had claimed not to have found any indication of corruption in it. "We put hopes in the new KPK chairman to resolve the case," he said.

All three agencies have new leaders in the form of National Police Chief Gen. Timur Pradopo, Attorney General Basrief Arief and KPK Chairman Busyro Muqoddas, who were all appointed to their posts over the past three months.

While most of the parties at the House back the probe, the ruling Democratic Party has defended the bailout and opposed any move to probe it.

Jafar Hafsah, the House Democrat chairman, said he believed the monitoring team should have been disbanded by now. However, he said that if the House believed the probes have to be further monitored, "we will follow what they say."

Mahfudz said the team would only call it quits once the KPK had issued its final report in the case. "Whether or not there was corruption in the bailout, the case will be closed," he said.