M. Taufiqurrahman, Jakarta – A leading corruption watchdog lambasted the government Tuesday for its failure to recover the bulk of taxpayer money stolen by corrupt businesspeople and officials.
Coordinator of Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) Teten Masduki rated as poor the performance of each agency enlisted to pursue people accused of corruption and seize their assets.
Teten said ICW data showed that of the Rp 5.3 trillion (US$588 million) the Attorney General's Office targeted to collect in 2005 from officials convicted of corruption, it only managed to recoup Rp 2.7 trillion as of November 2005.
An initial report from Attorney General's Office, dated Sept. 1, 2005, and cited by the ICW, put the figure of recovered state assets at Rp 500 million, before it was increased to Rp 2.7 trillion.
The ICW also found the state has reclaimed only Rp 8.8 trillion of funds embezzled by 10 major corruption figures, including timber baron Mohammad "Bob" Hasan, the former owner of BHS Bank Hendra Rahardja, who died after fleeing abroad, former Riau Islands regent Huzrin Hood and owner of defunct Modern Bank Samadikun Hartono.
The most striking example of the state's powerlessness in recouping its assets concerned the 20 percent recovery rate from bankers who misused Bank Indonesia Liquidity Support (BLBI) intended to support their institutions.
Up to the disbandment of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) in February 2004, it managed to recover 27 percent of the assets of failed banks. The government spent in excess of Rp 650 trillion to help the country's ailing banks cope with massive runs during the economic crisis of the late 1990s.
The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) also was taken to task for mediocre performance. In its three years of existence, the commission has recovered Rp 16 billion and $139,000 from 11 corruption cases.
Teten, who won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Human Rights in 2005, attributed the lackluster showing of the agencies, especially the Attorney General's Office, to the penchant of unscrupulous officials to either mark up or mark down assets seized from suspected corruptors.
"There is also no a standard procedure that calculates the state losses, the cost for assets recovery and the amount of assets that can be taken over," Teten told a seminar here.
Lawmaker Dradjad Wibowo of the National Mandate Party (PAN) agreed that the government still had a long way to go to recover a healthy amount of the embezzled assets.
"The Attorney General's Office and the judiciary better get their act together or we will suffer more losses, as we went through with IBRA," he told The Jakarta Post.
Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh responded to Teten's statement by saying that it was the judiciary that should be held responsible for only focusing on incarcerating convicted corruptors.
"We have drawn up dossiers, complete with punishment and the obligation for the defendant to return their ill-gotten assets to the state coffers should they be found guilty. But, most of the judges forgo giving a verdict about the financial obligations," Abdul Rahman said. He also noted many accused corrupt officials had been freed by judges despite the weight of evidence against them.