Ezra Sihite & Kunradus Aliandu – The Supreme Audit Agency said on Tuesday that between 2003 and 2011 it had submitted reports on 318 suspected graft cases involving a total of Rp 33.87 trillion ($3.73 billion).
The audit body, known as the BPK, said the reports were given to the police, the Attorney General's Office and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
"The three institutions have followed up many of our reports," BPK chairman Hadi Purnomo said after meeting with members of the House of Representatives.
Of the cases, 186 were delivered to all three agencies, Hadi said. There have been convictions in 64 of those cases, while two others are still in the trial process. Eleven more are waiting to be brought to court.
The rest are either in the pre-investigation or investigation phase, he said. "We have 132 reports that have not been followed up," Hadi said.
In the last six months of 2011, he said, the BPK oversaw the return of some Rp 15 billion to the state, after auditing 897 government institutions at the regional and central levels. Now, Hadi said, the BPK is overseeing the effort to recover another Rp 746 billion in stolen assets.
One of the more prominent audits his agency is working on, Hadi said, concerns last year's fuel subsidy. He said the BPK was about halfway finished with it. "It's almost done," he said, adding that he could not make public details of the audit until it was finished.
Last year's state budget limited the amount of subsidized fuel to 40.49 million kiloliters for 2011. But in reality, the government allocated 41.7 million kiloliters, Hadi said.
Indonesia Corruption Watch, an antigraft watchdog, has asked the BPK to check the government's fuel subsidy calculations in the budget bill after finding alleged markups in the numbers.
The budget assumed an international crude oil price of $105 per barrel, a 40.49 million kiloliter quota for subsidized fuel and a 3.61 million ton quota for liquefied petroleum gas consumption.
Based on that, the government put the cost of the subsidy at Rp 178 trillion, provided there was no increase in fuel prices. If fuel prices were increased by Rp 1,500 per liter, the subsidy would only cost 133.2 trillion, the government said.
ICW's calculations, though, put the cost of the subsidy, with no increase in fuel prices, at Rp 148.1 trillion. And if the government raised fule prices by 33 percent, the subsidy would only reach Rp 68.1 trillion, it said.
Based on its figures, the ICW said, the budget included markups of Rp 30 trillion and Rp65 trillion for the two scenarios. "Why do we have different results? The government should be transparent in its calculations. That's why we are asking both the KPK and BPK to check them," said Firdaus Ilyas, ICW's coordinator for budget monitoring.
Hadi said his office had yet to see the ICW's report but promised to look at any report concerning the fuel subsidy.
BPK audits also found financial inefficiencies in state health and education programs, which it said resulted in unnecessarily poor service. "We have found that medication services at state hospitals, especially for the poor, have not met standards," Hadi said. "We hope that the government can fix this."
The BPK said that despite the huge budget that had been allocated to the sector, many education agencies lacked a sufficient database for their students, teachers and schools.
It also found that teachers and civil servants in the sector were not as skilled as they should be because of poor training. Furthermore, schools generally lacked the facilities they needed to deliver quality education.