Key prosecutor`s arrest exposes murky world of Indonesian justice

Attorney General's Office prosecutor Urip Tri Gunawan was arrested on March 2 with 660,000 dollars in cash as he left the Jakarta home of Syamsul Nursalim -- just days after the AGO abandoned an investigation headed by Gunawan into the banker.

The AGO was looking into alleged misuse of 30.9 trillion rupiah (3.37 billion dollars) in bailouts handed to Nursalim's Bank Dagang Negara Indonesia during the Asian economic crisis a decade ago.

Gunawan claims the stacks of US dollar bills he is said to have received from a female associate of Nursalim, who has also been arrested, were payment for the sale of jewels.

But the country's Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is investigating if the money was related to the abandoned AGO probe.

The scandal has kicked off an internal AGO investigation and put the spotlight on senior officials Kemas Yahya Rahman and Muhammad Salim, who endured hours of grilling by the KPK on Wednesday.

Gunawan's arrest has further dragged down the already shaky reputation of Indonesia's AGO, which has the power to open and close cases and is, in theory, a key weapon in the country's battle against entrenched corruption.

It has also offered a jaded public a tantalising glimpse of workings of the country's so-called "court mafia" -- a system of deep-rooted bribery where verdicts are allegedly bought and sold.

Indonesians have long suspected collusion behind a series of bewildering verdicts involving rich and powerful defendants, but clear evidence rarely emerges in high-profile cases.

Cases that have raised eyebrows include last year's acquittal of timber baron Adelin Lis on illegal logging charges and a Supreme Court decision awarding former dictator Suharto 106 million dollars in a defamation suit against Time magazine over a 1999 article alleging massive corruption.


"When you have very strange and unjust determinations or decisions of the court, then you smell something. This is not easy to prove, I think only if the government has the will they can go after them," Todung Mulya Lubis, a campaigner with Transparency International (TI) Indonesia, told AFP.

However ...