Indonesia convicts jailed tax official of bribery

An Indonesian tax official has been sentenced to seven years in prison and fined $33,000 for bribing police investigators, prison guards and a judge in a corruption scandal that has raised questions about the effectiveness of government efforts to clean up the bureaucracy.

Gayus Tambunan was on Wednesday convicted of stashing away several million dollars in cash and gold bars, allegedly paid in bribes by companies seeking to evade taxes. The case has exposed a vast web of corporate corruption and gripped the nation.

Anti-graft groups dismissed the sentence as too lenient and said it should only be the starting point to investigate top officials. Prosecutors had demanded a sentence of 20 years.

It was unclear if the defendant’s lawyers would appeal against the decision. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the Indonesian president, referred the case to the Corruption Eradication Commission this week, opening the way for further prosecutions.

The government’s commitment to tackling graft has been increasingly questioned in recent years as it has done little to defend the commission from repeated attacks by politicians and bureaucrats.

South-east Asia’s largest economy has risen over the past few years in Transparency International’s corruption perception index, but it is still ranked 110th.

Mr Tambunan was found “legally and convincingly guilty of conspiring to commit corruption”, Albertina Ho, the presiding judge, said during a three-hour hearing in a packed Jakarta court.

The charges for which he was convicted included abuse of power, money laundering, accepting bribes and paying off police inspectors and his prison guards, who received roughly $40,000 in exchange for allowing him out of jail for day trips.

One of dozens of alleged outings was a trip to Bali, where Mr Tambunan stayed in a five-star hotel with his family and attended an international tennis tournament. He disguised himself in a black wig and thick glasses but was exposed by a press photographer.

Among the officials he was on Wednesday convicted of bribing was a judge who acquitted him of corruption last year. That judge is now serving a three-year sentence for receiving that bribe.

On a salary of roughly $1,000 per month, Mr Tambunan lived in a sprawling housing complex with a swimming pool, tennis court and jogging track.

Adnan Buyung Nasution, Mr Tambunan’s lawyer, said his client was the “lowest in the chain of hierarchy”. “What about those above him?” he asked.

The ruling on Wednesday did not address claims raised by Mr Tambunan during his trial of receiving $3m dollars from companies owned by the politically-connected Bakrie family, including the leading coal miner, Bumi Resources.

Claims that Mr Tambunan had dealings with nearly 150 companies would “have to be proved” in new proceedings, Judge Ho said. She said it was unusual for a low-level civil servant to have amassed Rp28bn rupiah ($3m).

The entire trial was aired on live television and reactions poured on to Facebook and Twitter Wednesday, mocking the court system and saying the story was worthy of a John Grisham thriller, only that it was not fiction.