At The Novel Constitutional Court Session Calling The KPK Helpless After The Revised Law, Leaders Have Different Opinions

Illustrations (Photo: Irfan Meidianto / VOI)

JAKARTA - Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) senior investigator Novel Baswedan was present as a witness from the petitioner in the follow-up hearing to review the KPK Law Number 19 of 2019 which was sued at the Constitutional Court some time ago.

During the trial, Novel said that the revision of the law that was passed by the Indonesian Parliament had made anti-graft institutions powerless. In fact, he said that this institution is more powerless than other law enforcement officials who deal with corruption issues.

"Compared to all law enforcement officials, even compared to PPNS, the KPK is more helpless because the KPK cannot take action under urgent circumstances. This is later considered ironic," Novel said in the trial which was broadcast online, Wednesday, September 23.

The helplessness of the KPK after the revision of the KPK Law, he said, was related to four crucial matters in eradicating corruption, namely wiretapping, searches, confiscation, and termination of investigations.

Regarding wiretapping, Novel explained that as a result of this revision, his party had to take care of complicated and layered permits. He said that before the revision he only needed to ask permission from the Director of Investigation and then directly to the leadership, now the process must be carried out in layers up to the KPK Supervisory Board and takes longer. This is what makes the institution unable to quickly obtain evidence of corruption recently.

In fact, the work of prosecuting corruption must be fast and immediate, because it is not impossible for the perpetrators of a crime to lose evidence.

This also occurs in the search process. Due to the revision of the KPK Law, searches may only be carried out with the permission of the KPK Supervisory Board. "With the process that requires permission, it does not provide room for action first after the OTT or certain actions to look for suspects who have fled. This is hampered," he said.

"The facts have happened. Many things have been done that have been hampered. This is related to searches, so this process must wait for it to be completed first before being carried out," he added.

Likewise with confiscation. According to him, confiscation with the obligation to have the supervisory board's permission made the investigating team inconvenient and kept the potential for the disappearance of evidence because the perpetrators and the parties involved had the opportunity, when the team asked permission from Tumpak Hatorangan, cs.

Novel then emphasized that even though the process of wiretapping, searches and confiscation could be carried out without asking permission, especially with the leadership or the court first, if in an urgent situation, the supervision was still running well because the process was tiered.

Furthermore, he alluded to the new provisions on stopping investigations which are the authority of the KPK and regulated in the KPK Law Number 19 of 2019. According to him, when this anti-graft agency did not have this authority, he was sure that there would be no intervention from outside to stop certain corruption cases. .

However, this turned into a problem and created opportunities for intervention. "Or maybe there is a problem in the process so that the process is not proportional or ineffective," he said.

"Of the four things I conveyed, of course, the impact of law enforcement is visible and weakening in the law enforcement process carried out," he said.

Deputy Chairman of the KPK, Alexander Marwata, who was present as a related party or representing the KPK, acknowledged that the process of requesting permits that had to be carried out by the investigation task force before carrying out wiretapping to confiscation of evidence made the process of investigating cases run longer.

However, he denied that there were obstacles due to the existence of the KPK Supervisory Board. Moreover, after the existence of the KPK Law 19 of 2019, he felt there were no obstacles that the investigating team had to face.

"So so far, if it is considered that there are obstacles, maybe not because all requests are always approved by the Supervisory Board. (For example) related to wiretapping, is there any obstacle in the presence of adults? it is always approved by the adult, "he said.

Even so, Alex said that the mechanism for requesting a permit was inaccurate because it should have been under the direct leadership. "For us it doesn't feel right because the quality assurance of various activities at the KPK should be the responsibility of the leadership," he said.

Meanwhile, Deputy Chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission, Nurul Ghufron, who was also present at the trial, said that Novel's concerns could happen. However, he could not further describe whether this licensing process was slowing down as his investigator said.

"We cannot describe this as slowing down or hindering. No. But adding more procedures so that later the concerns raised by Pak Novel Baswedan could indeed occur," he said.

It is known, since it was ratified by the DPR in September 2019, the KPK Law was then sued at the Constitutional Court. One of the parties that filed the lawsuit was the KPK leadership for the 2015-2019 period, namely Agus Rahardjo, Laode M Syarief, and Saut Situmoran.

In addition, there are the names of a number of other anti-corruption activists, including the leadership of the KPK from the pre-Agus Rahardjo period, namely Erry Riyana Hardjapamekas, Mochamad Jasin and a number of other names.

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