The law provides criminal penalties for official corruption, and the government generally tried to comply with the law. Elements within the government, police, and judiciary, however, tried to undermine efforts to prosecute corrupt officials. Despite the arrest and conviction of many high-profile and high-ranking officials, there was a widespread domestic and international perception that corruption remained endemic. The KPK, POLRI, the TNI Special Economics Crime Unit, and the Attorney General’s Office, under the deputy attorney general for special crimes, have jurisdiction over investigating and prosecuting corruption cases. The KPK does not have the authority to investigate members of the military, nor does it have jurisdiction in cases where state losses are valued below IDR one billion ($75,000).
KPK investigators were sometimes harassed, intimidated, or attacked due to their anticorruption work. In April unidentified assailants committed an acid attack against a senior KPK investigator, Novel Baswedan, resulting in a significant loss of vision; police have not identified who committed the attack, and the case remained under investigation. Baswedan had been investigating graft allegations associated with the electronic identity card scandal (E-KTP).
Corruption: The KPK continued to investigate and prosecute officials suspected of corruption at all levels of government. Several high-profile corruption cases involved large-scale government procurement or construction programs and implicated legislators, governors, regents, judges, police, and civil servants. Through the end of 2016, the KPK carried out investigations and prosecutions, recovering approximately IDR 497.6 billion ($37.3 million) in state assets. The KPK maintained a 100 percent conviction rate, supported by the prosecution of 3,640 graft cases from total of 3,669 cases from 2002 to 2016. According to its 2016 annual report, the KPK conducted 96 investigations; initiated 99 prosecutions; and completed 77 cases resulting in convictions.
On March 9, the KPK launched its prosecution of two former home affairs ministry officials for graft related to mark-ups in the Indonesian electronic identity card (E-KTP) procurement project, resulting in IDR 2.3 trillion ($172 million) in state losses. On July 20, the corruption court sentenced the two former officials, Irman and Sugiharto, to seven and five years in prison, respectively. The E-KTP case, which is the largest corruption case ever investigated by the KPK, expanded to include the prosecution of former speaker of the House of Representatives, Golkar politician Setya Novanto, whose trial started on December 13. On December 21, the Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced businessman Andi Agustinus to eight years in prison for conspiring with Novanto and others to embezzle IDR 52.7 trillion ($7.5 million). Former minister of home affairs Gamawan Fauzi and more than 37 DPR members were implicated in the KPK’s indictment. The KPK also pursued criminal prosecution of former DPR lawmaker Miryam Haryani, who the court sentenced to eight years for perjury after she retracted her earlier testimony in the case following alleged intimidation from DPR members, as well as Markus Nari, a legislator from the Golkar Party, for perjury related to the case.
Corruption courts handed down convictions in many high-profile corruption cases during the year. Three former national lawmakers--Damayanti Wisnu Putranti, Budi Supriyanto, and Andi Taufan Tiro--were sentenced in late 2016 and early 2017 to between four and nine years in prison for allegedly accepting bribes from a construction vendor to secure the tender of a road construction project in Maluku Province. The Trans-Maluku road case was significant in implicating almost one-half of all legislators from the commission overseeing the project, as well as high-ranking officials from the Ministry of Housing and Public Works, and local government officials in Maluku Province. The project demonstrated the pervasive and systemic corruption spanning both the executive and legislative branches.
In October 2016 President Joko Widodo issued a presidential regulation creating a task force to eradicate illegal fines and petty graft. According to a report issued on August 2 by the Coordinating Ministry for Politics, Law, and Security Affairs, the taskforce confiscated IRD 17.6 billion ($1.3 million) in illegal fees and conducted more than 900 raids. Authorities named 1,834 individuals from the government, police, and the Attorney General’s Office as suspects. Of the more than 31,000 complaints, 36 percent concerned the delivery of public services, 26 percent dealt with law enforcement, 18 percent focused on educational institutions, and 12 percent related to license and permit issuance.
According to NGOs and media reports, police commonly extracted bribes ranging from minor payoffs in traffic cases to large bribes in criminal investigations. Corrupt officials sometimes subjected migrants returning from abroad, who were primarily women, to arbitrary strip searches, theft, and extortion.
The KPK arrested several judicial authorities during the year, including a Constitutional Court judge, and corruption watchdog groups said corruption remained rampant throughout the legal system. Bribes and extortion influenced prosecution, conviction, and sentencing in civil and criminal cases. Key individuals in the justice system were accused of accepting bribes and condoning suspected corruption. Legal aid organizations reported cases often moved very slowly unless a bribe was paid and that in some cases prosecutors demanded payments from defendants to ensure a less zealous prosecution or payment to make a case disappear.
Between April 2016 and May 2017, the National Ombudsman Commission received 392 complaints related to litigation favors and maladministration in court decisions. In the same period, the Judicial Commission received 712 public complaints related to judicial authority misconduct and recommended 33 judges be subject to further investigations. As of July 27, the Commission recommended sanctions for three judges accused of manipulating trials.
Financial Disclosure: The law requires senior government officials, as well as other officials working in certain agencies, to file financial disclosure reports. The law requires that the reports include all assets held by the officials, their spouses, and their dependent children. The law requires reports to be filed when the official takes office, every two years thereafter, within two months of leaving office, and immediately upon request by the KPK. The KPK is responsible for verifying disclosures and publicizing them in the State Gazette and on the internet. There are criminal sanctions for noncompliance in cases involving corruption. Not all assets were verified due to human resource limitations within the KPK. On December 11, the KPK launched a new online system for submitting the mandatory wealth reports.
In July 2016 the newly appointed police chief, Tito Karnavian, mandated that all senior police officials disclose their financial statements. Following up on the police chief’s instruction, Jakarta Metro police chief Moechgiyarto explained that police would only be obliged to submit the asset report to police internal affairs and not to the KPK, to avoid public misperceptions of the investigations.