Abdul Khalik, Jakarta – The government does not have the political will or the guts to take proper action against the bad debtors connected to the swindled Bank Indonesia Liquidity Assistance (BLBI) funds, lawmakers and graft activists said Wednesday.

The activists said the corruption scandal was uncovered a decade ago and in all that time the government had remained still around the fraudulent debtors.

For some 10 years, debtors had failed to repay the billions of dollars they owed to the state under the BLBI scheme. The government also had not satisfactorily recovered state money taken abroad by some "non-cooperative" debtors, the activists said.

On Tuesday the government released a list of 10 bad debtors during a question session at the House of Representatives to seek the government's explanation about its efforts to recover the embezzled BLBI funds.

"The interpellation process suggested that the government looked to be reluctant and not tough against bad debtors, while it is clear that it knows exactly whom it must go after," said House budget committee member Hari Azhar.

The list included Gorontalo Governor Fadel Muhammad – one of Vice President Jusuf Kalla's close aides in the Golkar Party – as "non-cooperative" debtors. Some debtors are widely believed to have fled abroad with the money.

Separately, Danang Widoyoko of the Indonesia Corruption Watch similarly lashed out at the government for its unclear stance in dealing with the bad debtors. Further confirmation of the government's lack of will to prosecute the debtors was that many had successfully fled abroad, he said.

The government told the House all 10 debtors, including Fadel, owed a total of more than Rp 11 trillion to the state. Fadel, who owned the now-defunct Bank Intan, had only paid Rp 4.9 billion out of his Rp 88.2 billion loans under the BLBI scheme, it said.

However, Fadel rejected being included on the government's list. "The inclusion is inaccurate and invalid, thus leading to a character assassination and defamation," his lawyer Muchtar Luthfi said in a statement sent to The Jakarta Post. "The data used (on the list) is the 2002 data, and has not been updated."

Muchtar said the latest data was a "law binding court verdict" that favored his client in a case over the Bank Intan's liquidation against the central bank and the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency. Based on the ruling, he said Fadel had no further obligation to the state and in fact the government owed him Rp 23.5 billion.

Speaking to the press at the presidential office, Attorney General Hendarman Supandji said he was baffled Wednesday when asked about the legal status of the bad debtors.

"Don't be in a hurry to ask questions about whether the debtors have become suspects or not. They are non-cooperative," he said.

Hendarman said in addition to the 10 bad debtors, prosecutors and police also handled another six cases, each of them dealing with eight cases.

The government's list, however, showed of the eight cases of bad debtors handled by the police, only one reached the court, with three cases being dropped and four others still under investigation. The AGO had done no better, with only one case brought to court. Three were dropped and four were still under investigation.