Jakarta – The Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) said on Wednesday that 71.43 percent of all illegal loggers forced to stand trial were acquitted of all charges, and 14.29 percent were sentenced to less than one year in jail.

ICW researcher Donal Fariz said the Forestry Law was weak because it did not describe in detail holistic forestry crime. He urged the government to enforce corruption charges in forestry crime.

Article 2 (1) of the Law on Corruption, which identifies people who breach the law to enrich themselves or someone else or a corporation in a way that inflicts losses on the state or to the state economy, can be applied to illegal logging.

Donal said the ICW found that millions of hectares of forests in Central Kalimantan, for example, had been logged without clear permits, which raised further suspicions of corrupt practices among regional administration officials.