Probe: Case against Indonesian anti-graft officials flimsy

Nov 9, 2009, 13:16 GMT

Jakarta - A case against two of Indonesia's anti-graft officials accused of extorting money from a businessman is weak owing to lack of evidence, a presidential investigative team said Monday.

Police and the Attorney General's Office have been under public fire after wiretapped recordings revealed an alleged conspiracy involving senior police and prosecutors to frame the two deputy chairmen of the Corruption Eradication Commission.

Anti-graft activists have charged that the alleged plot is part of a systematic attempt to undermine the anti-corruption body, known as KPK.

The uproar over the recordings prompted President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to set up a eight-member team panel last week to find the truth about the allegations.

'There's not enough evidence to charge Bibit Samad Riyanto and Chandra Hamzah,' the chairman of the team, Adnan Buyung Nasution, said at a press conference.

Nasution said it could not be established that the two commissioners had received money from a businessman they were investigating in a corruption case.

The team, which has no power to stop the criminal probe against the two commissioners, had submitted its findings to the president, he said.

The alleged plot has raised questions about Yudhoyono's determination to fight endemic graft, especially in the notoriously corrupt judicial system.

Public pressure has forced the national chief of police detectives, Sisno Duadji, and Deputy Attorney General Abdul Hakim Ritonga to resign after their names were mentioned in the recordings.

In the wiretapped phone conversations, the brother of businessman Anggoro Widjoyo discussed with a senior state prosecutor and police investigators scenarios to save Anggoro from prosecution.

The alleged plotters also discussed evidence of bribery that could be used against commission officials investigating the businessman and spoke of cash and gifts for senior officials supporting the effort.

The scandal has transfixed Indonesians. Thousands of people on have staged street protests and more than 1,000,000 have joined a Facebook page in support of the commissioners.

The commission, which was set up in 2003 to fight corruption in one of the world's most graft-prone nations and has the power to arrest and prosecute, has been widely praised by the public for a series of successful prosecutions of high-profile offenders.

Legislators, governors, former ministers, businessmen, one prosecutor and top central bank officials, including an in-law of Yudhoyono, have been jailed by a special corruption court.

The commission's trouble began in May when its chairman, Antasari Azhar, was arrested for allegedly orchestrating a murder.

Azhar, who claims the charges against him were trumped up, is now on trial and could face the death penalty if convicted.