Jakarta. The National Police recently unveiled its plan for a “police-to-police” scheme with several ASEAN countries to help hunt down Indonesia’s graft fugitives hiding overseas, including bribery suspect Harun Masiku who is still at large.

“We are working on a partnership with a number of countries in ASEAN to make the search easier with a police-to-police scheme,” National Police Chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo told a press briefing on Tuesday.

According to Listyo, the National Police are approaching several ASEAN countries for collaboration under the scheme but he did not mention which countries Indonesia would be teaming up with to track down its fugitives.

“Hopefully, this can assist the arrest of the fugitives that are outside Indonesia, particularly in countries with whom we can establish a police-to-police cooperation,” Listyo said.

Anti-graft commission KPK told the same presser that it had caught 17 out of its 21 graft fugitives. Four, including Harun Masiku, are still on the run. KPK chief Firli Bahuri said name changes have hampered the search efforts.

“Arresting a person must be based on law. It turns out that when we make an arrest attempt, the person in question would have changed his name. So if he was originally called PT, his name had already been changed to TPT,” Firli said, alluding to Paulus Tannos, who became a graft suspect in the national electronic identity (e-ID) card case.

“But we will never give up, as we are already aware of PT changing his name to TPT," he said.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo said that the G20 under Indonesia’s presidency had agreed on making corruption eradication a priority. Indonesia will also strengthen its commitment against corruption as it chairs ASEAN this year.

“As ASEAN chair, Indonesia will strengthen its commitment to corruption eradication and law enforcement in the region,” Jokowi told reporters, while pledging that he would not tolerate any corruption perpetrators.

The aforementioned four graft fugitives are Harun Masiku, Ricky Ham Pagawak, Kirana Kotama, and Paulus Tannos. 

KPK put Harun on its wanted list in 2020. The anti-graft body accused the politician of bribing General Elections Commission (KPU) commissioner Wahyu Setiawan in exchange for a seat in the House of Representatives. 

Central Mamberamo regent Ricky became a suspect for money laundering and graft involving infrastructure projects in his government. He joined the wanted list in July 2022.

Perusa Sejati owner Perusa Sejati Kirana joined KPK’s wanted list in 2017 under suspicion of graft in procurement with the state-owned shipbuilder PAL. 

Paulus, the president director of smart card printing firm Sandipala Arthaputra, has stayed on KPK’s wanted list since 2021. He was named a suspect in the e-ID card scandal which took place from 2011 to 2013. KPK earlier this year revealed that it could have caught Paulus in ASEAN member state Thailand. Paulus' Interpol red notice, however, came too late because he had already changed his name to Thian Po Tjhin (TPT) and thus got away.

The press briefing came after the release of a report on Indonesia’s corruption perceptions index (CPI) by Transparency International. Indonesia’s CPI score fell from 38 in 2021 to 34 last year. This index ranks 180 countries and territories worldwide by their perceived levels of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). Indonesia ranks 110th out of 180 countries.

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