Prosecutor's Office Detains Corruption Suspect Fund For West Papua DPRD Secretariat

The suspect in the budget corruption case at the West Papua DPRD Secretariat with the initials ARL (a prisoner's camp) when he left the West Papua Prosecutor's Office in Manokwari/ANTARA/Fransiskus Salu Weking

MANOKWARI - The West Papua High Prosecutor's Office (Kejati) has again detained a suspect with the initials ARL after being named a suspect in a case of alleged corruption in the West Papua DPRD Secretariat budget of Rp4.38 billion.

Head of West Papua Prosecutor's Office, Harli Siregar, said the suspect ARL was the owner of two companies in collaboration with the FKM suspect, the former secretary of the West Papua DPR.

Suspect ARL submitted disbursement documents worth more than Rp2.2 billion for several work items such as secretariat maintenance, cleaning materials expenditure, leadership consumption, and board members as well as guests.

"ARL is collaborating with FKM which has been detained previously. The budget has been disbursed, in fact the work is not carried out," said Harli Siregar, quoted by ANTARA, Tuesday, August 22.

He explained that the suspect ARL was detained at the Class IIB Manokwari Correctional Institution (Lapas) for the next 20 days, while waiting for the prosecutor's investigators to complete the case file.

After the case file is completed, the suspect ARL will be transferred to the Corruption Court at the Manokwari District Court to undergo the trial process.

"We are also trying to transfer the (FKM) to the court as soon as possible," explained Harli.

He emphasized that the prosecutor's investigator will continue to rely on evidence, not even the assumption of certain parties in disclosing cases of alleged corruption.

The development of the alleged corruption case in the budget for the maintenance of the West Papua DPRD Secretariat is based on preliminary evidence of misuse of the budget.

"Of course in this context, there is sufficient preliminary evidence from both witness statements and other evidence," explained Harli.

Previously, the West Papua Prosecutor's Office detained the former DPR Secretary FKM on Thursday (27/7) night for abusing the maintenance budget sourced from the West Papua Province Revised APBD in 2021.

Assistant for Special Crimes (Aspidsus) of the West Papua High Prosecutor's Office Abu Hasbullah explained that the FKM suspect used the strategy of breaking the work package into seven parts to avoid the auction mechanism that should have been applied.

The FKM suspect then used the profile of the service provider company owned by ARL as the third party to win the seven work packages in question.

"The service provider was not verified. After the funds were disbursed into the service provider's account, the money was immediately handed over to the suspect. So the suspect only borrowed the flag of another company," he said.

The FKM suspect involved a number of staff and security officers (security guard) at the West Papua DPRD Secretariat to carry out office yard maintenance work.

The implementation of the seven work packages only started in 2022, even though the budget had been disbursed and received by the FKM suspect a year earlier.

The prosecutor's investigator charged the suspect with Article 2 paragraph (1) in conjunction with Article 18 of the Corruption Eradication Law in conjunction with Article 55 paragraph (1 to 1) subsidiary to Article 3 of the Criminal Code.