KPK Targets Illegal Use of State Assets

The Corruption Eradication Commission said on Friday that it had recovered more than Rp 3.1 trillion ($313 million) worth of stolen assets and state losses over the past year.

Haryono Umar, the graft prevention deputy for the commission, which is known as the KPK, said that the body had identified assets like homes and buildings owned by the government and state-owned companies that were occupied by unauthorized people.

“A lot of retired civil servants still occupy those properties,” he said.

“Even relatives of dead civil servants live in them.”

In order to save state funds, the government often provides homes for some civil servants.

These properties are supposed to be returned to the state once a civil servant retires or dies.

In most cases, retired officials or relatives of deceased civil servants stay on or move out, but rent the properties to third parties.

The Army Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad), for example, is now struggling to evict relatives of retired personnel from an army housing complex in South Jakarta, many units of which have been rented out to third parties.

“They must realize that the homes are not theirs and must be handed back to the authorities,” Haryono said.

From June 2008 to this month, the KPK recovered more than Rp 554 billion worth of stolen assets, including property worth Rp 70 billion and land belonging to state train operator PT Kereta Api Indonesia.

Last year, the KPK only targeted seven institutions, but Haryono said the commission’s antigraft effort has just started.

“There are still homes and buildings stolen from local governments — we haven’t touched them yet, although we have recovered a few,” he said, adding that the KPK was not planning to prosecute rogue officials responsible for selling or stealing state assets.

“We are still focusing on asset recovery,” he said.

Haryono said that the Ministry of Finance would be in charge of the recovered assets.

“The ministry is still building an inventory of all government assets, so we don’t yet know the depth of the problem,” he said. “This is the result of decades of poor supervision.”

“In the future, the Finance Ministry will manage all of our assets, so the data will be centralized,” he said.

Haryono said that the recovered state assets included Rp 2.6 trillion tied to a government oil and gas contract.

In March, state oil and gas company PT Pertamina and BPMigas, the country’s upstream oil and gas regulator, submitted about Rp 2 trillion in recovered funds.

Since then, four other companies operating in the energy sector — BP, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and PT Medco Energi International ­— have returned state funds.