Pangkep Prosecutor's Office Detains 2 Corruption Suspects In CCTV Procurement

The Pangkep District Attorney's Special Crime Investigation Team (Kejari) has finally detained two people who have been named suspects in the alleged corruption case in the procurement and installation of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in Pangkajene Islands (Pangkep) Regency, South Sulawesi.

"In order to smooth the investigation process and it is feared that the suspect will damage and or destroy evidence, so he will be detained today (15/3) for the next 20 days at the Pangkep Class II Detention Center based on an order from the Head of the Prosecutor's Office," said the Head of the Intelligence Section of the District Attorney's Office, Sulfikar, as reported by ANTARA, Friday, March 15.

Based on the results of a series of investigations by the Special Investigation Team of the Pangkep District Attorney's Office, it has raised the status of two witnesses, each with the initials WPP as the Head of the General Section of the Regional Secretariat of the Pangkep Regency Government and SF as a private party as a suspect.

The determination of the suspect was based on the letter from the Head of the Pangkep District Attorney Number: KEP-16/P.4.27/Fd.1/03/2024. In addition, the Pidsus team has examined 85 witnesses and one expert.

"From the results of the series of investigations, two sufficient pieces of evidence have been found as regulated in Article 184 paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code," he said.

The alleged corruption case is related to the procurement and installation of CCTV at 30 urban villages in Pangkep Regency for the 2022-2023 fiscal year. The Investigative Team has also received money deposited to compensate for state losses from various parties in the amount of Rp. 400 million.

For the modus operandi, the WPP suspect at that time served as Acting Head of Pangkajene Sub-district in 2022. He together with the SF suspect formed a team of six people with the aim of taking over the work that should have been done by the local community group.

The WPP suspect also asked the 30 village heads to hand over a CCTV procurement budget of Rp150 million to do it themselves. The purpose of the takeover of the project is allegedly to seek profit, even though this project has never been proposed by 30 village heads.

In addition, this project does not have a clear plan so it is suspected that the two suspects were used to make a Draft Budget (RAB) in an unprofessional way and even mark-up budget items with the aim of getting personal gain.

In order to cover up their actions, the suspects ordered someone to engineer an accountability report as if the activity was carried out by a community group. The results of the audit by the investigative team together with the auditor team found a potential loss to the state of Rp1 billion.