JakartaPost-Dec 11
The National Police has introduced its new corps tasked with eradicating corruption as the force aims to reinvigorate the country’s efforts against graft in line with the vision of President Prabowo Subianto. But the police’s new antigraft team has been met with skepticism from observers, who question the corps’ effectiveness in fighting corruption given the existence of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and Attorney General’s Office (AGO), which are better known for investigating corruption cases. At an event to mark International Anticorruption Day in Jakarta on Monday, the National Police presented the corps, which has been officially named the Corruption Eradication Corps (Kortas Tipidkor). Among the main tasks for the corps are preventing corruption; investigating and prosecuting graft cases; and tracking and recovering assets linked to corruption cases, according to the corps’ chief Insp. Gen. Cahyono Wibowo. He admitted that his team would have similar authorities and funding to the KPK and AGO. But he asserted such factors would not hinder the three institutions from working together. “This collaboration prioritizes coordination and communication. [Nobody] will look to one up the others. We will have to work together with fellow law enforcement officers so that we will run properly,” Cahyono said on Monday. He added that the corps would look into major and minor corruption cases to avoid the public perception that the police are lax in regard to corruption. But the establishment of the new corps provides no guarantees that the police will do better on eradicating corruption, said Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) researcher Diky Anandya. Among the three law enforcement institutions authorized to prosecute corruption cases, studies suggest that the police have investigated the fewest cases compared with the AGO and KPK, particularly before the 2019 amendment of the KPK Law. A report from ICW revealed that the number of cases and suspects investigated by the police had stagnated in the past five years, with a total of 730 cases investigated by the force in 2023 against the AGO’s 1,695 cases. Read more at:
https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2024/12/11/police-unveil-new-antigraft-corps.html.
