Ina Parlina, Jakarta – The Judicial Mafia Taskforce says it found indications of widespread corruption in the country's land management sector and urged the government to focus on reforming land management.
"Twenty-two percent of the 4,301 reports we received are related to the land sector," Judicial Mafia Taskforce member Mas Achmad Santosa told The Jakarta Post via text message Friday. "That indicates there is a big problem in the land management system in the country.
"I'd say it's time to reform the public services in the land sector because it affects the livelihoods of many citizens," he said. However, Mas Achmad added that his office had not found a pattern used by perpetrators within the sector, saying it was being studied.
He urged the nation's anticorruption body to focus on the National Land Agency (BPN), which is in charge of land management in the country.
"All this time the country has focus on reforming the National Police, prosecutors and the courts. Meanwhile the land sector is murky as well," he said. "We will work with the Corruption Eradication Commission [KPK] as soon as we finish our study on the pattern."
KPK spokesman Johan Budi told the Post that his office had looked at graft in the land sector and concluded that the land agency was just as corrupt as other well-known corrupt institutions such as the police.
The KPK's 2010 Public Sector Integrity Survey, which was conducted between April and August last year involving 12,616 respondents in 22 cities, showed that the land agency, which has local offices across the country, failed to reach the KPK's minimum standards of integrity.
KPK set the standard for the survey at 6.00 on a scale of 0 to 10.00 based on efforts to eradicate and prevent corruption in the country. The index reflects respondents' experiences with corruption, whether in the form of gratuities, middlemen, red tape or other forms.
In 2007, the KPK arrested the former head of the Surabaya Land Agency, Mohammad Khudlori, for extorting a client. He was found guilty and sentenced to 15 month in prison by the Surabaya District Court.
Mas Achmad said violations were not likely to occur only at the land management body, but also during land dispute settlement in courts.
Last year, the Corruption Court sentenced businessman D.L. Sitorus and his lawyer Adner Sirait to five and four-and-a-half years in prison respectively for bribing a judge.
They were both found guilty of bribing Jakarta High Administrative Court judge Ibrahim Rp 300 million (US$34,500) in March 2010 to win a land dispute against the Jakarta administration.
They were also fined Rp 150 million each or serve an additional three years in prison. The judge who accepted the bribe, Ibrahim, was sentenced to six years in prison and fined Rp 200 million by the same court on Aug. 2. The Supreme Court later reduced Sitorus' prison sentence to three years.
On Friday, the taskforce also disclosed findings that 14 percent of all reports it received were related to corruption, collusion and nepotism and 9 percent to fraud.