New Corruption Bill Covers Private Sector, Foreigners

Jakarta Globe, Heru Andriyanto, March 16, 2011

A bill to implement an international antigraft convention will have broader powers than existing legislation by criminalizing private-sector corruption and bribery of foreign public officials, an official said on Tuesday.

Muhammad Amari, the Deputy Attorney General for special crimes, said the bill would be applicable for all graft cases, even those not incurring state losses.

“Under the existing law, bribery in the private sector doesn’t classify as corruption, unless it involves state officials,” he said.

“The new bill, meanwhile, applies to [all] bribery within the private sector.” The bill, being drafted by the Attorney General’s Office, will implement the UN Convention Against Corruption, which was ratified by Indonesia in 2006.

Among the other changes it will introduce to existing antigraft legislation are the criminalization of foreign public officials taking or receiving bribes and the criminalization of match-fixing in sporting events.

“Foreigners can be charged with corruption under the bill,” Amari said.

“The UNCAC has ruled on those things. Because we’ve ratified the convention, we have to adopt them into Indonesian law.”

The current antigraft legislation, the 1999 Anti-Corruption Law, did not recognize match-fixing as a criminal offense.

He said the new bill was not an amendment of the existing law, but was meant to replace it outright to provide a broader legal foundation for the antigraft drive.

Amari added that a draft of the bill had been submitted by the AGO to the State Secretariat for approval after which it would be handed to the House of Representatives for deliberation.

Antigraft campaigners on Wednesday hailed the bill as a major step toward adapting domestic law enforcement efforts to the global fight against corruption. Emerson Yuntho, a senior member of the nongovernmental organization Indonesia Corruption Watch, said it was necessary to have legislation that recognized the impact of corruption on the public as well as on the state.

“The antigraft campaign introduced by the UNCAC is not limited to state interests,” he said. “It has a broader approach of combating corruption that harms the interests of the public, not just the state.”

He also welcomed the fact that the bill would not affect the work of the Corruption Eradication Commission, which has its own set of legislation for tackling graft. “Instead, the new law will grant the commission broader authority and coverage to combat corruption,” Emerson said.

However, Hifdzil Alim, from the Center for Anti-Corruption Studies at Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University, said introducing yet more antigraft legislation would prove futile unless corruption within law enforcement agencies such as the police and prosecutors’ offices was addressed.

“Even as we discuss this issue, reports are coming out that [police generals] Edmond Ilyas and Raja Erisman were made to apologize to the National Police chief for their handling of a major graft case, amid widespread allegations that they took bribes,” he said.

“Amari himself is not free from scandal. He once hosted a secret meeting with [media tycoon] Harry Tanoesoedibjo, whose brother was being investigated by the AGO in a major corruption scandal.”

While the new bill was important, “above all we need the law enforcement agencies to clean up their act before claiming to have made things better,” he said.