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Indonesia's anti-graft agency declared suspect status against the outgoing chief of Indonesian State Auditing Agency (BPK) Hadi Poernomo shortly after he retired from his post for his involvement in graft case that cost the state some 375 billion rupiah (about 32.4 million U.S. dollars).
The suspect status issued by KPK (Corruption Eradication Commission) on Monday night, was quickly followed by travel ban issued by the immigration office against the outgoing chief of one of the nation's supreme institutions.
"We issued the travel ban against him that takes in to effect on Monday night until the next six months," the Immigration office Heriyanto said on Tuesday. The imposition of travel ban was necessary to prevent the suspects from fleeing out of the country to avoid further investigation against them.
KPK Chairman Abraham Samad said the graft committed by Hadi Poernomo occurred in 2004 during his service as the tax director general at the financial ministry from 2002 to 2004.
"The losses came up from tax that failed to be paid to the state, amounted 375 billion rupiah (about 32.4 million U.S. dollars)," Samad said in his office on Monday.
Should Hadi was proved of committing in corruption case charged against him, he may face 20 years of imprisonment plus the obligation to pay 1 billion rupiah (about 86,700 U.S. dollars) of fines.
Hadi allegedly misused his authority to change the status of tax appeal filed in by the largest private bank in the country, Bank Central Asia (BCA), from 'rejected' to 'granted' that led to loss to the state from tax payment from the bank.
Samad said that the tax appeal was related to the tax on the bank's Non-Performed Loan (NPL), which amounted to 5.7 trillion rupiah (about 493.8 million U.S. dollars) in 1999 when the country was severely hit by financial crisis.
"The legal breaching deed committed by the suspect was the misuse of his authority in granting BCA's tax appeal," Samad pointed out.
Hadi was declared suspect shortly after handing over his post on Monday morning.He served as the BPK chairman since 2009.
Corruption remains a major challenge faced by Indonesia which has been striving to eradicate such a misdeed that cost the state and eroded the public's trust against government and state institutions.
The powerful government-sanctioned anti-graft agency (KPK) is now processing high-profile corruption cases involving senior officials of the country, minister and former ministers, police and senior executives of political parties.
Some of them had gone through trials that sentenced them up to 20 years imprisonment.
