Jakarta – Corrupt village heads in Indonesia's Riau province are reportedly making a fortune selling falsified marriage certificates to men who wish to take second wives. Although the country's 1975 marriage law permits Muslim men to take up to four wives, polygamy is generally not common.

Civil servants, in particular, are forbidden from having additional wives – although the government disclosed on Tuesday that it was considering lifting the ban.

The Indonesian Observer newspaper and Antara national news agency yesterday quoted Mr Asyari Nur, head of the Riau Religious Affairs Department, as saying that many civil servants in the province have been paying bribes to village heads in order to obtain falsified marriage certificates.

While the Religious Affairs Department is aware of the practice, it has been unable to put a stop to the illegal marriages, he said. "The problem is related to the administrative systems of village heads, as they can easily issue any documents relating to marital status," he said.

"But we have detected that many of those documents are illegal, because their serial numbers are not registered at the Religious Department's Marriage Office, and they have not been signed by Marriage Office personnel. The problem is that it's a big job to go from one house to another to check the validity of those documents."

Mr Asyari said officers from his department have nevertheless made several random checks and discovered many illegal marriages. "Some documents have their serial numbers registered with the Marriage Office, but they are illegal if the two figures do not match. In other cases, both figures match, but the signatures of the officials are false."

A legitimate marriage certificate costs only 35,000 rupiah (S$7), but a false one costs up to three million rupiah. The Riau Religious Affairs Department is working with the police to crack down on illegal marriages. On Tuesday, Indonesian Religious Affairs Minister Tolchah Hasan said the government may lift a ban on polygamy by civil servants if that was their wish.