JAKARTA: Diners at de’Clan Signature, an eatery in the low-rise South Jakarta neighborhood of Cipete, knew something was up when heavily armed police converged upon the restaurant last Wednesday (July 8) afternoon.
Personnel from Jakarta’s police force and the National Police’s corruption crime corps, under the guard of Mobile Brigade officers in full tactical gear and carrying long-barrel firearms, zeroed in on a roughly two-metre-high safe concealed behind a cabinet at the upscale cafe.
Inside, they found documents and cash in various currencies worth millions of dollars. Startled onlookers watched as troops continued next door to Koin Money Changer, where they opened another safe that held stacks of rupiah-denominated banknotes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars more.
The raids were just two of several that were unfolding in and around Indonesia’s capital, strikes that would continue into the early hours of Thursday as police swooped in to seize mobile phones, photographs and troves of physical documents.
None, however, quite compared to what was found in a home south of Jakarta.
At a high-end residence in the hills of Sentul, a green suburban retreat about an hour away by car, police discovered seven suitcases containing 74kg of gold bars along with cash in multiple currencies.
The total estimated the value of the haul: US$26.3 million.
The house belongs to Febrie Adriansyah, a man who for the past more than four years had served as deputy attorney general for special crimes until he resigned over the weekend in the wake of the raids.
Febrie, who has subsequently been named a suspect in corruption and money-laundering investigations although not detained, acknowledged owning the Sentul house but said the seized assets weren’t his. Their provenance would be revealed through the legal process, he added.
Row upon row of the gleaming bullion and piles of orange and red cash tied in fat wads, captured by the media as they were displayed by authorities, have quickly become the defining images of one of the biggest scandals to hit Indonesia’s law-enforcement establishment in years.
As the searches widened from Cipete to Sentul, police searched at least 10 other locations, including a residence at the high-end Pacific Place apartment towers not far from the city’s stock exchange, as well as company offices around the city.
Several other houses were also combed, including one in the Gandaria area of South Jakarta that was linked to Don Ritto, a lawyer who has also been named a suspect in the cases. Ritto has been detained, according to local reports.
Ritto has business interests in companies linked to the raided restaurant and money changer, the local media added, citing corporate records.
By Monday afternoon, some quarters of Jakarta were abuzz with what the next steps could be and more broadly, whether the discovery of the riches suggests anti-corruption safeguards are functioning as intended, or whether the steady stream of scandals points to a deepening corruption problem.
Mahfud MD, a prominent constitutional law scholar, former chief justice of Indonesia’s Constitutional Court and former coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs, took to his You Tube channel to publicly question the legality of transferring the investigation surrounding Febrie from the police to the Attorney General’s Office.
The move has no basis under Indonesia’s criminal procedure code and could expose the case to a pretrial challenge, Mahfud, dressed in a white, blue and black Batik blazer said. He called for the Corruption Eradication Commission, an an independent state body, to take over the investigation. -Bloomberg
