Anggodo vs. KPK Leaders

The faith of those who are directly or indirectly involved in corruption can be better than those who are fighting corruption.

That's what I thought when I read on The Jakarta Globe that the District Court of South Jakarta has accepted the petition filed by Corruption Suspect Anggodo Widjaya for cancellation of the Attorney General Office's decision to discharge Vice Chairmen of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) i.e. Chandra Hamzah and Bibid S. Waluyo from prosecution.

With this Court's decision, the Attorney General Office will have to revive its Prosecution against both KPK leaders.

April 19, 2010

Jakarta Globe

Anggodo Widjojo in this file photo outside the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). The controversial businessman and graft suspect is back, at that is bad news for KPK deputy chairmen Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M Hamzah. (Antara Photo)

Anggodo Revives Prosecution of KPK Deputies 

Corruption suspect Anggodo Widjojo has been able to revive the controversial and allegedly bogus criminal case against respected Corruption Eradication Commission deputy chairmen Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M Hamzah.

The South Jakarta District Court on Monday accepted a motion filed by Anggodo — the brother of fugitive businessman Anggoro — against the decision of the Attorney General’s Office to abandon its prosecution of Bibit and Chandra.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had publically urged that the hugely unpopular prosecutions be abandoned in the wake of public outrage and the findings of a presidential task force that concluded the charges were part of an alleged conspiracy involving elements of the AGO, National Police and Anggodo himself to bring down the commission, also known as the KPK.

Bibit and Chandra were initially charged with abuse of power and allowing Anggoro to flee to Singapore but it was widely acknowledged that little evidence existed.

Prosecutors, on the back foot last year, said at the time that prosecuting the deputies would be more “harmful than beneficial to bring the bribery case to the court.”

Anggodo challenged the AGO’s argument, saying that public pressure had been applied in reaching the decision, which was not in accordance with the Criminal Procedures Code and therefore violated the law.

The decision to revive the prosecution was made by the sole Judge Nugroho Setyadi.

KPK spokesman Johan Budi was not immediately available for comment.

Coins for Justice

Today, the number of coins donated by people all over Indonesia to help Prita Mulyasari has reached more than 650 million Rupiah.

This is 3 times higher than the 204 million Rupiah (US$ 21,600) fine that Prita must pay based on the verdict of the High Court of Banten regarding Civil Defamation Lawsuit filed against her by the Omni International Hospital in Banten.

The support for Prita has forced the hospital to request for cancellation of Civil proceedings, and request for amicable settlement based on the intermediary of the Minister of Health.

These efforts failed, because Prita wants the Criminal Prosecution against her at the District Court of Tangerang to be canceled too, but cannot be fulfilled by the hospital. So Prita appealed with the Supreme Court for the civil lawsuit case.

Although the Criminal Prosecution is carried out by the District Attorney, but Prita's demand is reasonable, because the Prosecution exists based on the hospital's report to the Police.

In connection with the injustice faced by Prita and the people's support, a businessman Rahmat Shah said that he wants to buy the coins and build a statue that symbolize justice in his hometown Medan North Sumatera.

For detailed media reports, please click here and here.

The coins shows that people hated the injustice faced by Prita who was jailed for 3 weeks just because she sent e-mail to her relatives and friends about the hospital's terrible services.
Whereas there are other people who were suspected of conspiracy against the Corruption Eradication Commission(KPK) but still untouched by the law.


Image: Courtesy of Wikia.

Outsourced Prosecution

Maintaining permanent status employees seems to be very difficult for employers nowadays, that they tend to outsource the works in their company.

In the legal proffession, lawyers often delegate the authority they obtained from their clients to other lawyers. But, I never heard public authority being delegated to third parties especially private enterprise. However, that seems to change now in America.

According to CNN, since the year 2006, prosecution offices in 17 U.S states have retained a collection agency i.e. American Corrective Conselling Services (ACCS) to pursue consumers who write bad checks. ACCS then splits the collection proceeds with the Prosecutors. Beside that, ACCS also make money from conducting Financial Management courses that people who wrote bad checks are required to attend by the law at their own expenses. With this incentives, ACCS became very aggresive in hunting bad checks that their actions not only victimized people who wrote bad checks on purpose, but also others who did it accidentally. For example, Michael O'Neil who bounced a US$ 14 check to a Florida drugstore ended up spending $285, including $160 for the course fee. Although O'Neil tried to resolve the situation with the drugstore he was told that it was too late, because they had turned the matter over to ACCS.
This kind of outsourcing practices have strongly been protested by Consumer Groups, who accused that prosecutors are also passing on their prosecutorial powers as well. In many cases, stores are sending checks directly to ACCS, and ACCS is sending out collection letters with prosecutor letterhead, and no prosecutor has actually reviewed those cases.

The above shows that although outsourcing maybe good for private businesses, but for public services, especially prosecution offices, its application should be carried out very carefully, so as to avoid bad excess.