Ina Parlina, Jakarta – Wafid Muharam, 51, the secretary to the Youth and Sports Minister was sentenced on Monday to three years in prison for accepting bribes in connection with the athletes' village construction project for the SEA Games in Palembang, South Sumatra.
An antigraft panel of judges found Wafid guilty of accepting Rp 3.2 billion (US$325,000) in bribes to rig bids in favor of the company PT Duta Graha Indah (DGI), which won the project worth around Rp 191 billion. He is the first government official to be handed a jail term in the scandal.
Prosecutors for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) had sought a six-year jail term for Wafid.
In September, the Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced go-between Mindo "Rosa" Rosalina Manullang to two years and six months in prison and Rp 200 million in fines and DGI's marketing manager, Mohamad El Idris, to two years in prison and Rp 200 million in fines for bribing Wafid.
Rosa is a confidante of former Democratic Party treasurer and lawmaker Muhammad Nazaruddin, who is now standing trial for allegedly masterminding the whole bribery scheme with help from Democratic Party lawmaker Angelina Sondakh, who was also a member of the House's budget committee.
"The defendant was found guilty of violating the Corruption Law. As a state official, the defendant should have rejected the offer [of money]; yet, he argued it was a loan," presiding judge Marsudin Nainggolan said.
Marsudin said the judges found Wafid guilty of accepting three checks worth Rp 3.2 billion from El Idris, with the help of Rosa, at Wafid's office on the evening of April 21, just minutes before KPK investigators raided the premises and arrested the three.
The checks, which were kept in a white envelope inside a green folder, were later entrusted to Wafid's staff member, Poniran, he added.
The panel of judges rejected Wafid's pleas of innocence when he claimed the checks were loans for the project, the same excuse used by both Rosa and El Idris.
"There is also evidence that fees were given to another individual, Rizal Abdullah [the chairman of a local organizing committee in South Sumatra] and others, and this makes his defense irrelevant," Marsudin said.
In a trial session in September, Youth and Sports Minister Andi Mallarangeng testified that his ministry did not receive any third-party loans to build the athletes' village.
Andi has also come clean in the whole affair saying that the task of overseeing the tender auction lay with the local organizing committee and that the ministry only helped with wiring the funds.
Emerson Yuntho from watchdog Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) slammed the verdict, saying that it would do little to unravel the larger scandal behind it.
"First, it is too light [a sentence] for a suspect in a high-profile bribery case. And second, the judges did not try to pursue Wafid's role in the case, which could implicate others, such as minister Andi," he said.