Dicky Christanto, Jakarta – An anticorruption NGO is seeking a court verdict to overrule the National Police's decision to halt an investigation into suspicious bank accounts allegedly belonging to a number of police generals.
The Indonesian Anti-Corruption Society (MAKI), believing the police's probe was flawed, filed its request with the South Jakarta District Court on Monday.
The NGO, in a separate request, also asked the court to revoke the force's decision not to follow up a testimony of former tax officer Gayus Tambunan that he had received bribes from a number of companies.
"We care about the quality of police investigations. We expect the court to conduct a thorough examination of the way the police handled those cases," Boyamin Saiman, MAKI's coordinator, said in a written statement.
He said MAKI questioned why the police had not conducted a thorough investigation into the two cases.
"We deplore the police's decision to stop at simply verifying the police generals' wealth when in fact they could have gone further. And we are baffled as to why the police remain idle following Gayus' testimonies mentioning the names of the companies that bribed him over all of those years," he said.
Criminal Code Procedures allow a third party to challenge a law enforcement body's decision to halt an investigation into a case through a pre-trial lawsuit.
However, MAKI's effort will likely fail. Chaerul Huda, a police chief's legal adviser, said the pretrial lawsuit was way too premature since no investigation had ever been conducted into the police officials' personal bank accounts.
"How can the panel of judges properly assess [the investigation] if none was ever conducted in this matter," he told The Jakarta Post.
He acknowledged that the police hadn't followed up Gayus' testimonies regarding the involvement of three Bakrie-linked companies, PT Arutmin, PT Bumi Resources and PT Kaltim Prima Coal in the multi-million bribery case centering on the rogue tax official.
"It was because the investigators found hardly any supporting evidence, not because there was any dubious goings on," he said.
Emerson Yuntho of the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) said MAKI's request represented the public's demand to know more about the cases.
"The people are now witnessing how law enforcement is not properly carried out in this country. What MAKI has been doing here is simply representing this feeling. It could put the nation's security at stake if the leaders do nothing about it," he said.
The police have been under public scrutiny since an antigraft NGO issued a report saying that a police general had Rp 95 billion (US$10.64 million) in his bank account. Media reports later revealed that other generals had implausibly large bank accounts.
The National Police announced last month that of the 23 high-ranking police officers alleged to have amassed illegal wealth in their bank accounts, only the accounts of two of them were deemed suspicious.