Jakarta. Police in Jakarta have named a senior Trade Ministry official a suspect in a developing corruption case after $42,000 in cash was found inside a desk in his office this week. The cash is believed to be bribe money linked to the pre-customs clearance process at Indonesia’s largest shipping port, Tanjung Priok in North Jakarta.
Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Muhammad Iqbal said that investigators had decided to name the trade ministry’s director general of overseas trading, Partogi Pangaribuan, a suspect in the case. Partogi has been suspended from active duty following the discovery of the cash on Tuesday.
The formal decision to go after Partogi came in the early hours of Friday, after the senior official underwent 12 hours of questioning at the Jakarta Police headquarters in South Jakarta.
“There is more than enough,” Iqbal said of the evidence police gathered prior to the decision to name Partogi a suspect. Police have obtained “witness testimonies which corroborate the evidence seized by a special task force during the raid. There is also money flowing to Partogi’s bank account.”
Police believe Partogi is guilty of four counts of corruption and three counts of money laundering. If convicted, the official could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The chief of Jakarta Police, Insp. Gen. Tito Karnavian, said a decision would soon be on whether Partogi should be detained.
“We will collect more evidence first,” he said on Friday.
“We are pursuing the money laundering case. We will decide whether the proceeds of the crime have been converted into assets, and laundered using an intermediary or laundered through investments.”
Police, Tito continued, will also track down the source of the illicit cash, adding that officials from other agencies linked to the dwell time process — the amount of time a container spends at the port before moving on — at Tanjung Priok port will also face questioning.
“Dwelling time involves three processes: pre-customs clearance, customs and post customs clearance. We are focusing on the pre-clearance process first,” the two-star general said. “The pre-clearance process is very important because it is connected with how long imported goods should dwell at the port. Which is why we are targeting the Trade Ministry first.”
Police have also charged two more ministry officials, identified only by their initials M.E. and I.M., as well as another individual, M.U., who police said acted as an intermediary between importers and officials.
It is not clear what the suspected bribe money was for or where it originated, but the long dwell times at the port have come under scrutiny since an enraged President Joko Widodo noted that Tanjung Priok’s dwell time was an average of 5.5 days — the longest in Asia.
Joko threatened to fire officials unless the port’s dwell time was shortened to at most 4.7 days. Currenlty, a container on average spends 3.6 days during the pre-customs clearance process.
Trade Minister Rachmat Gobel has suspended Partogi along with three other high-ranking officials following Tuesday’s raid.
Rachmat has appointed the ministry’s inspector general, Karyanto Suprih, to temporarily replace Partogi.
“We will use the momentum of this case to figure out what are the weaknesses in the current system,” he said on Thursday.
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Source: Indonesia
