Kafil Yamin – A group representing about 60 pharmacy owners in North and Central Jakarta has lodged a complaint with city police, claiming to have been blackmailed by a rogue police officers for almost a year.

The group's 13 representatives filed the complaint on Friday at the North Jakarta district police office, saying the rogue officers claimed to be members of the National Police's crime division.

"We cannot stand it any longer, to be put through this extortion," said one of the complainants, who owns a drug store in the Cempaka Putih area of North Jakarta. All of the shop owners who spoke to the Jakarta Globe requested anonymity or the use of false names for fear of retribution. The alleged method of extortion was similar across the pharmacy stores, the Globe heard in a series of interviews.

"A group of five or six men force themselves into the shops and abruptly start checking the medicines as if they are doing a criminal investigation," another pharmacy owner said.

The "officers" would specifically look for medicines that were past their expiration dates, show them to the shop owner and say: "You're selling banned drugs. You must come with us to police headquarters," the source said.

"Of course we have a lot of expired drugs already packed to be returned to our distributors," the source said, "but the police use them to fabricate evidence of us selling them illegally."

The men then forced shop owners to be detained "for further investigation." During the supposed trip to the National Police headquarters, the men would start threatening the pharmacy owners with lengthy prison terms and fines, giving them the option of going to jail or paying the officers a "much smaller amount," shop owners claimed.

"When they were taking me in their car, they said that I could be fined Rp 500 million ($42,500), but I could avoid it by paying them Rp 300 million," said Bambang, who owns a pharmacy store in the Tanah Abang area of Central Jakarta.

Bambang said he was forced to negotiate with the "officers" as he only had Rp 10 million in his bank account, and they finally settled on Rp 30 million.

Several owners said the extorters had given them false names and phone numbers, leading them to question whether they actually worked for the National Police.

Parman said that in June 2008, five men came into his North Jakarta store on the pretense of buying medicine. Suddenly, another group of men stormed in saying they were from National Police headquarters.

"What they found were actually expired medicines, not illegal ones. But they insisted I had broken the law by selling expired medicines," Parman said, adding that the medicines had been packed up to be returned to his distributor.

"Then they said they were taking me to police headquarters. On the way, they threatened me with a Rp 1 billion fine for illegal sales," Parman said. "I was overwhelmed by fear, and I finally agreed to pay them Rp 50 million."

Several of the pharmacy owners told the Jakarta Globe similar stories, comparing the extorters to robbers and kidnappers.

Another shop owner who called herself 'Heny' said she called the North Jakarta Police office two weeks ago to report the extortion cases, and officers had said they would take necessary measures to find the accused. Last week, she called police again and was told they had arrested two suspects, identified as Antonious and Bambang.

Heny and other pharmacy owners went to the police office on Friday to identify the suspects, but after initially agreeing to the request, police said they could not see them.

"An officer at the police office told us that the [suspects] had been transferred to another prison for further investigation," Heny said, adding that they had then decided to lodge a formal complaint.

Although officers told the Jakarta Globe the suspects were being held in the crime division room, one officer admitted that "not a single policeman has been arrested here."

Rico Amelza, North Jakarta Police chief, gave a different version of the story, saying that two people, who were not police officers, had been brought in for questioning and later released on lack of evidence. (Additional reporting by Nivell Rayda)