Markus Junianto Sihaloho & Rizky Amelia – A Democratic Party executive has corroborated allegations that Anas Urbaningrum, the deposed chairman, handed out bribes to party delegates to vote for him during a leadership congress in Bandung in 2010.
"I was, indeed, a member of Anas's campaign team, [but] I wasn't involved in the funding," Sutan Bhatoegana, a member of the Democrats' central leadership board, said in Jakarta on Thursday.
"There was a distribution [of money] in Bandung to the delegates from the party's regional offices. But there was none for me. Because I refused to have anything to do with that." He added he had heard rumors about the bribes but stressed he was not among those who received any of the money.
Sutan also claimed not to know which of the regional delegates received the money from Anas's campaign team. He said all he knew was that the team had handed out cash and brand new cellphones to the delegates so that they could communicate with them without anyone from the teams of the rival candidates finding out.
With regard to the hosting of the congress itself, Sutan said he was convinced that the event was not funded with money obtained through corruption or bribery. "I am sure there was none. For the congress, the party had its own funds. We funded it ourselves," he said.
Sutan, who is also a legislator, said he had tried to warn Muhammad Nazaruddin, the party's treasurer at the time and a close confidant to Anas, against the cash-for-votes ploy, but Nazaruddin had insisted that the other candidates for the party's chairmanship were also doing the same.
Nazaruddin, currently serving a seven-year prison sentence after being convicted last year in a separate corruption case, was the one who initially raised the allegation about the bribery, claiming that
Anas distributed to the delegates Rp 100 billion ($10 million) in cash and phones from a kickback that he allegedly received from the Hambalang sports center project.
"I didn't see the distribution of the cash, but I know [it happened]. I told Nazar, don't do this. Nazar said the others [candidates] were also doing it," Sutan said. "That's what Nazar said. Now he's in trouble, but I don't know about the others."
Sutan argued that buying votes was "not necessarily wrong," as long as the money came from a legitimate source.
The two other candidates running against Anas were Marzuki Alie, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and Andi Mallarangeng, the sports minister at the time.
Both Anas and Andi have since been named suspects by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) for alleged bribery, embezzlement and bid-rigging in connection with the Rp 2.5 trillion project to build a sports center in Hambalang, Bogor.
Sutan's claims come as the KPK ramps up its investigation into the alleged flow of the Hambalang bribe money to the Democrat congress in 2010.
On Thursday, antigraft investigators questioned Deni Petrajaya, the manager of the Grand Aquila Hotel in Bandung, one of the venues where the activities for the three-day congress were held.
Yogi, the manager of the Aston Tropica Hotel, another of the venues, told the KPK last week that prior to the congress, Anas's campaign team had sent over a van from Jakarta containing Rp 35 billion and $5 million in cash.
He said the money was delivered to the Aston, allegedly to be distributed to the congress delegates, consistent with Nazaruddin's account of the case.
Priharsa Nugraha, a spokesman for the KPK, confirmed that the hotel managers were questioned as witnesses against Anas, but declined to give details on the nature of the questioning or what was revealed.
On Wednesday, the KPK confirmed its impending arrest of Anas and Andi. "They will most definitely be arrested," said Johan Budi, another KPK spokesman. "Later on we'll confirm who will be arrested when."
The KPK has come under heavy criticism for its perceived reluctance to take the two officials into custody despite naming them suspects several months ago.
Critics have also questioned the slow pace of the investigation, which began in August 2011, but the KPK argues that it needs to be able to accurately determine the amount of losses incurred by the state from the corruption before it can proceed with making arrests or taking the suspects to court.
It is currently working with the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) on establishing the losses from the Hambalang project. A preliminary BPK audit last year put the estimated losses at around Rp 243 billion, although both the BPK and the KPK have stressed that this is not the final figure.
Bambang Widjojanto, a KPK deputy chairman, acknowledged over the weekend that the process was taking a long time, but vowed not to be rushed and to work closely with the BPK to get a clear picture of what the Hambalang sports center project had really cost the state.
"I've already said before that there's a methodology for determining state losses," he said, adding that the KPK had not set a date for when they expected the calculations to be completed.
The KPK has named two other people besides Anas and Andi as suspects in the case. They are Deddy Kusdinar, a former mid-ranking official at the Sports Ministry, and Teuku Bagus Mokhamad Noor, a former director at state builder Adhi Karya, which is alleged to have bribed Anas and other legislators in exchange for winning the project contract.
Andi's predecessor at the Sports Ministry, Adhyaksa Dault, previously hinted that more legislators could be charged in the case. He said in April that KPK investigators had asked him about the role of legislators in approving an increase in funding for the project.
"It was a new line of questioning for me when they asked about specific legislators," he said, but declined to reveal whose names the investigators had dropped.
"The point is that the investigation appears to be narrowing down and the [KPK's] suspicions are growing stronger." Adhyaksa had initially pegged the budget for the Hambalang project at Rp 300 billion, but after Andi came into office in 2009, the budget ballooned to Rp 2.5 trillion.