Muhammad Nafik, Nusa Dua, Bali – Indonesia's democratization and decentralization have virtually "opened new avenues for corruption" at the political and administrative levels, said a report released during an international anti-graft conference here Monday.

It said that since the regional autonomy was enforced in 2001, a wave of corruption cases had swept across the country's newly empowered legislative and executive bodies.

"Decentralization opened new avenues for corruption to the local elite, which may earlier have had difficulty getting their 'fair share of the cake' in a tightly centralized Indonesia," it said.

The report was issued by the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Center based in Bergen, Norway, as the five-day Second Conference of the States Parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption opened in Nusa Dua, Bali.

The report of corruption studies in six countries – Indonesia, Georgia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Tanzania and Zambia – was initiated during the first Conference of the States Parties in Jordan in 2006.

It said the implementation of autonomy saw a high number of graft cases prosecuted in regions that spread from regional legislatures to the executive bodies.

The report said there were 265 corruption cases reported in 2006 involving local legislative councils, with suspects facing charges by prosecutor's offices around the country.

"The disclosure of corruption cases on this scale is an unprecedented phenomenon in Indonesia. "It can be said that corruption in Indonesia is systematic, deeply rooted and ranges from petty to very high-level corruption," it said.

The report said democracy and decentralization had certainly led to a reduction in blatant "palace corruption" and had decreased the government's mingling with the private sector, which was flagrant under the late former president Soeharto and his cronies.

Democracy has also increased the degree of transparency and consequently the higher incidence of reported corruption, it added.

"On the other hand, several reports indicate that this has not resulted in an actual decrease of the level of corruption but that corruption has simply been decentralized in parallel at the political and administrative level," it said.

A poll referred to by the World Bank showed the majority of Indonesian households found the level of bribes had remained "more or less the same since the decentralization, although it has slightly improved the delivery of services".

According to a public perception survey conducted by Transparency International Indonesia (TII), the judiciary was among the most corrupt state institutions in the country together with the House of Representatives, police and public prosecutors.

Indonesia is home to the most corrupt politician ever, the international non-governmental organization added.