Jakarta – The head of the national police’s Criminal Investigation Bureau (Bareskrim) Money Laundering Crimes Sub-Directorate III, Senior Commissioner Budi Wibowo took the witness stand at the pre-trial hearing into a motion filed by national police chief candidate Commissioner General Budi Gunawan against the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) at the South Jakarta District Court on Tuesday February 10. Wibowo testified on the matter of the suspicious bank account that earlier resulted in the KPK naming Gunawan a suspect.
Wibowo said that he was aware that there were information analysis reports (LHA) from the Financial Transactions Reporting and Analysis Center (PPATK, anti-money laundering agency) on suspicious bank accounts belonging to several national police (Polri) senior officers. Wibowo also said that one of the LHAs was on Budi Gunawan and was a PPATK report for the years 2005 to 2008.
At the time, continued Wibowo, the national police Criminal Investigation Bureau (Bareskrim Polri) formed an investigation team to look into Gunawan’s LHA. After being investigated and clarified by the team however, Gunawan’s bank account was declared proper and no suspicious money transfers were found. Gunawan’s clarification report was returned to the PPATK by Bareskrim.
“The original LHA document was stored in a special document storage room”, said Wibowo during the hearing.
In mid-January 2015, when reports emerged that Gunawan had been declared a suspect by the KPK for allegedly holding a suspicious bank account, Wibowo, on his own initiative, reopened the LHA in the storage room but he was unable to find the original document, only a copy of Gunawan’s LHA. “I don’t know where the original went”, said Wibowo.
Wibowo said there were 117 LHA documents stored in the room. Fifty-three of these had already been clarified by Bareskrim, including Gunawan’s. What surprised Wibowo was that of these 53, it was not just Gunawan’s LHA clarification report that only held a copy, but he found that there were five other clarification reports on national police senior officers that did not have the original documents.
At the time he was checking Gunawan’s clarification report, Wibowo’s superior officer was also in the same room. Without mentioning their name, his superior also repeatedly asked why there was only a copy of Gunawan’s LHA clarification report and not the original document.
“To this day, we are still conducting an internal investigation that is continuing to pursue the matter”, continued Wibowo.
Wibowo said that the LHA that was clarified was the same as the one that has been circulating in the mass media. Wibowo also said that of the many witnesses summoned by the KPK into Gunawan’s case, one of them was a person summoned by the Bareskrim investigation team at the time of the investigation into Gunawan’s LHA. He was not however prepared to reveal the identity of the individual.
Budi Wibowo was one of four witnesses presented by Gunawan’s attorney in a pre-trail hearing between Gunawan and the KPK on Tuesday. Aside from Wibowo, the other witnesses presented were former KPK investigator and active police officer Hendy F. Kurniawan, national police officer Adjunct Senior Commissioner Irsang and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Secretary General Hasto Kristiyanto.
KPK legal attorney Chatarina Mulia Girsang said that out of the four witnesses presented on Gunawan’s behalf, there was no testimony whatsoever about the process by which the KPK declared Gunawan a suspect.
As has been reported, the pre-trial motion is against the KPK’s naming of Gunawan as a suspect. Girsang said that only the third witness’ testimony, Wibowo’s, was relevant because he testified about Gunawan’s LHA. Girsang said however that the testimony did not touch on Gunawan’s arguments in the pre-trail hearing. Girsang also said she was sure that at the hearing into evidence by Gunawan’s party that will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, the witnesses presented would be the same.
[Slightly abridged translation by James Balowski for the Indoleft News Service. The original title of the report was Dokumen LHA PPATK untuk Budi Gunawan di Mabes Polri Raib.]
