ICW Calls Corruption Cases In The Village Fund Budget The Most Corrupted

Screenshot of Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) researcher Lalola Easter (left) as a speaker at the launch of the 2021 Corruption Eradication Trends Report / Photo: Antara

JAKARTA - The Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) researcher Lalola Easter said that based on his side's monitoring, it was found that in 2021, most cases of corruption occurred in the village fund budget sector.

"In 2021, law enforcement officers handled the most corruption cases in the village fund budget sector, with as many as 154 cases," said Lalola when she was a speaker at the Launching of the 2021 ICW Corruption Enforcement Trends Report which was broadcast live on the Friends of ICW's YouTube channel, as monitored in Jakarta, Monday, April 18.

Thus, the ICW encourages the Government and law enforcement officials to conduct strict monitoring, control, and evaluation of the use of village fund budgets.

Lalola said that corruption is indeed vulnerable to occur in this sector because the village fund budget is of great value. For example, in 2022, the state allocates a village fund budget of IDR 68 trillion.

"With the extraordinarily large budget allocation, it needs to be accompanied by close monitoring and control and evaluation of how the budget is used and managed appropriately," said Lalola.

This condition is also in line with the ICW's findings related to state institutions that are most involved in corruption cases. Lalola said that his party found that in 2021, the village government was the institution with the most corruption cases handled by law enforcement officers.

He also said that the trend of corruption in the village fund budget sector with actors in the village government has increased since Law Number 6 of 2014 concerning Villages was passed.

"Since the law was passed, although there has been a decline in terms of the number of cases and the potential for state losses in 2019, you can see an increasing trend from 2015 to 2018, Then, it will happen again in 2020 to 2021," said Lalola.

He further explained, in 2021 there will be 154 cases in the village fund budget sector with a total of 245 suspects and a potential state loss of IDR 233 billion. Then in 2020, there were 129 cases with 172 suspects.

Based on the ICW's monitoring, Lalola said that his party assessed that law enforcement officers in the country needed to improve the quality of their work by not only ensnaring actors at the village level.

They also need to be aware of cases of corruption in the village fund budget related to higher-level officials, both at the regional and central levels.

Then to overcome the problem of corruption in the village fund budget, ICW recommends that the Government, especially the Ministry of Villages, Development of Disadvantaged Regions, and Transmigration of the Republic of Indonesia take concrete steps to carry out more strategic corruption prevention.

Then, it is also necessary to accelerate the implementation of the National Strategy for Corruption Prevention (Stranas PK) related to village financial supervision.