The Jakarta Globe, Nivell Rayda, February 25, 2009
The Corruption Eradication Commission on Tuesday made a surprise raid on the Health Ministry’s head office in South Jakarta as part of its probe into alleged corruption involving one of the ministry’s purchases in 2007.
The commission, better known by its acronym KPK, suspects that the budget for providing X-ray machines to several state-run hospitals was inflated by Rp 4.8 billion ($403,200).
A ministry official in charge of the project, Mardiono, has been declared a suspect but is yet to be detained or questioned.
Fourteen agents were deployed to search for documents and evidence related to the case, and at least four rooms were searched, including Mardiono’s office and the document storage room, said Johan Budi, the KPK’s spokesman.
“The search was to find additional evidence for the case,” Johan said, refusing to detail what documents the agents were looking for.
Several ministry officials have been grilled by the commission, while Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari is expected to be questioned soon.
The commission on Tuesday also raided the office of the X-ray provider, PT Bhineka Husada Raya, in Rawamangun, East Jakarta. Johan would not say what KPK agents had confiscated.
The case was first reported by the country’s antigraft watchdog, the Indonesia Corruption Watch, which told the commission last year that the ministry was rife with corruption.
The group reported that a total of Rp 128 billion ($10.88 million) had been embezzled from the ministry, the biggest spending government institution in the country, through several of its projects.
Lily Sulistyowati, the ministry’s spokeswoman, confirmed that the KPK search had taken place but could not say which rooms had been searched or what the commission was looking for.
“We respect what the KPK is doing, but to be honest, the case came as a surprise to us,” she said. “We conduct all our tenders in a fair manner and we are very transparent in our reports. We welcome a Supreme Audit Agency inspection of all our projects.”
However, sources at the ministry who refused to be named told the Jakarta Globe last week that markups, sometimes up to four times market prices, inflated quantity claims, and that embezzlement in ministry projects were common at almost every level.
The health minister told reporters that she was not aware of the details of the X-ray project. “This is a yearly project and I don’t know the amount or any other details, but I have told my inspector general to review the project,” she said.
The X-ray provision case, Johan said, was only one of two cases the commission had agreed to investigate. The other case involved a ministry project related to the bird flu outbreak in 2005.
“It’s still under investigation and it is possible that another suspect will be named,” the KPK’s Johan said.
The Supreme Audit Agency, or BPK, said in a report last year that it had found more than Rp 93 billion of the Health Ministry’s money stashed in undeclared deposit accounts. Several pieces of land owned by the ministry were also being used by other parties, including 18 hectares in Bogor, West Java Province, that had been turned into a golf course.
The BPK said that Rp 521 billion of decentralization funds to local health agencies may also have been misappropriated.
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