Jakarta. The top two officials in the Indonesian police force continue to contradict each other over their stance on ongoing investigations into antigraft officials, suggesting a power struggle being mounted by Budi Gunawan, a one-time graft suspect whose bid to be police chief was thwarted last month.

The office of Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, the National Police’s chief of detectives and a self-proclaimed loyalist of Budi Gunawan’s, is pressing ahead with investigations into suspended Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) officials Abraham Samad and Bambang Widjojanto, including by summoning witnesses for questioning this week.

However, Comr. Gen. Badrodin Haiti, the National Police deputy chief and nominee for police chief, insists that the police have agreed to scale down their probes into KPK officials, which they launched following the KPK’s announcement in mid-January that it had named Budi Gunawan a suspect for bribery and money laundering.

“The bottom line is there are resolutions to the legal processes being conducted by the KPK and the National Police through several moves,” Badrodin said on Thursday, referring to an apparent agreement by the two law enforcement institutions to stop investigating each others’ members.

Badrodin said the KPK had done its part by handing over the investigation into Budi Gunawan to the Attorney General’s Office. (Attorney General H.M. Prasetyo has since hinted his office will not pursue any charges against the police general, who was initially named a suspect in connection with irregular transactions amounting to millions of dollars flowing through his personal bank accounts from 2003 to 2006.)

In turn, the police have promised to drop almost all of the 26 investigations into KPK officials, some dredged up from more than a decade ago and widely seen as retaliation by the police force for the KPK’s naming of Budi Gunawan as a suspect. Only the cases against Abraham and Bambang will still go on, Badrodin said.

“While waiting for the [tensions between the KPK and police] to cool down, the legal process against [Abraham and Bambang] has been postponed, not stopped,” he said, adding the postponement would last “one or two months.”

“The cases involving these two will continue because they have already been legally charged.”

Abraham has been charged with allegedly helping a prominent graft convict receive a reduced sentence last year in exchange for political backing from the convict’s party to support Abraham’s alleged bid to become vice president last year.

In a separate case, the South Sulawesi Police have charged Abraham with document forgery after he allegedly falsified a document to help a woman, Feriyani Lim, apply for a passport in 2007.

Bambang is accused of compelling witnesses to commit perjury in a regional poll dispute he handled as a lawyer in 2010.

Despite Badrodin’s assurances that the police’s attacks on the KPK would end, Budi Waseso’s office has persisted in questioning witnesses and issuing a summons for Bambang. (Bambang refused to come in for questioning on Wednesday.)

“We’re still completing the file. There might be other witnesses, other evidence,” Budi Waseso said on Thursday.

His investigators also questioned Cabinet Secretary Andi Widjajanto as a witness in Abraham’s case on Thursday.

Andi said the investigators agreed to come to his office at the State Palace complex instead of him having to go to the National Police headquarters.

Andi was a member of President Joko Widodo’s campaign team and said to be a key adviser in the selection of a vice presidential candidate.

Badrodin said separately that Budi Waseso was well aware of the arrangement to ease up on the KPK, but did not offer an explanation for why he was not honoring the postponement.

“Chief of detectives Budi Waseso was present when the deal [with the KPK] was made,” he said.

While Badrodin is the acting police chief, hence Budi Waseso’s superior, the two men are of the same rank — commissioner general — a fact that some analysts say explains why Badrodin has struggled to keep his subordinate in check.

Budi Waseso was one of Budi Gunawan’s closest lieutenants and was named the chief of detectives — the most important post in the force after that of the police chief — days after the KPK charged Budi Gunawan.

The chief of detectives has ramped up his assault on the KPK by going after some of its leading supporters, including Denny Indrayana, the former deputy minister of justice. The police earlier this month conjured up a case no one had ever heard of before by alleging corruption in the procurement of an online payment system for passport applications set up by the Justice Ministry to help prevent graft.

Investigators from Budi Waseso’s office questioned Denny about the matter on Thursday, but he denied any wrongdoing or that the system had resulted in losses to the state. He denounced the investigation as “trumped up” because of his strong support for the KPK.

Police claim they have also received criminal complaints against former anti-money-laundering chief Yunus Husein, whose office unearthed the suspicious transactions in Budi Gunawan’s accounts, as well as Tempo magazine, which has been outspoken in its support of the KPK.

The magazine was the first publication to report the suspicious transactions linked to Budi Gunawan and several other police generals, in a controversy that came to be known as the “fat accounts” scandal.

The police have also threatened to sue the National Commission on Human Rights, or Komnas HAM, for declaring that it had found an indication of rights abuses in the police’s arrest of suspended KPK deputy Bambang in January. Police accuse Komnas HAM of violating the law by disclosing the results of its probe.

Badrodin said he did not know about the lawsuit against Komnas HAM, much less authorized such a move.

The post Three-Star Wars as Generals Battle It Out Over KPK appeared first on The Jakarta Globe.

Source: The Jakarta Globe