Rizky Amelia – Antigraft investigators raided the central bank on Tuesday as part of a widening probe into alleged irregularities in the Rp 6.7 trillion ($677 million) bailout of Bank Century in 2008.

Johan Budi, a spokesman for the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), confirmed the operation but declined to give details about what the investigators were looking for.

Bank Indonesia officials also confirmed that 45 KPK officials arrived at the central bank's office in Central Jakarta on Tuesday morning with a warrant to carry out a raid in connection with the Century case.

Difi A. Johansyah, a BI spokesman, said that the investigators had searched "several departments in connection with the Century bailout."

"They searched inside the banking supervisor's office, the bank regulator's office, the monetary policy office and in my office," he said as quoted by Kompas.com.

Peter Jacobs, another spokesman, said he did not know what documents the investigators had taken away with them. "They had a court-issued warrant with them, but we don't know what exactly they were looking for," he said.

He added that BI officials had cooperated fully during the search and that the central bank had nothing to hide.

The bailout of Century, a mid-sized lender, during the height of the global financial crisis generated immense controversy in Indonesia, with critics alleging a litany of irregularities in the decision that some say was taken to save politically connected depositors.

The House of Representatives adopted a resolution in 2010 declaring that the bailout was fundamentally flawed, which prompted the KPK, the Attorney General's Office and the police to launch parallel probes into the bailout and the subsequent flow of money.

But the law enforcement agencies have so far failed to uncover any evidence of corruption. The investigators did find evidence of banking violations, which resulted in the conviction of bank owners Robert Tantular, Hesham al Warraq and Rafat Ali Rizvi, but those offenses occurred prior to the bailout.

The KPK's raid of the central bank comes several weeks after its investigators questioned Sri Mulyani Indrawati, the finance minister at the time of the bailout, in Washington, D.C.

Sri Mulyani, who now serves as a managing director at the World Bank, has been a special focus of the House special committee overseeing the probes, who insist that she and Vice President Boediono, the former BI governor, should be investigated for their roles in approving the bailout.

Bambang Soesatyo, a Golkar Party legislator who has been outspoken about the need to go after the two officials, lauded the KPK for seizing documents and CCTV footage from BI, saying the evidence they were bound to reveal could shed a new light on the case.

He said he hoped the documents would show where all the money actually went to, insisting that "not all the money that left BI reached the Century management."

Both Sri Mulyani and Boediono have insisted that they were justified in preventing the collapse of Century, which they say would have posed a systemic threat to the wider banking sector.