How Corrupt Is Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

20.02.2012

Sudjadnan Parnohadiningrat likes to think someone at work hated him so much that he had to face corruption charges not once, but twice.

In 2011, five years after he was appointed ambassador to the United States, the highlight of his career, the Anti-Corruption Court in Jakarta found him guilty of unlawfully disbursing funds to Indonesia’s embassy in Singapore when he was secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Sudjadnan was sentenced to 20 months in prison but got out early when his term was cut. But he only had a brief taste of unadulterated freedom: just a few weeks after leaving prison, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) named him a suspect in a different case.

“I was shocked to hear it, especially because I didn’t hear it firsthand. [Former KPK chairman] Busyro [Muqoddas] told the press about it and that’s how I found out,” Sudjadnan told the Jakarta Globe in a recent interview.

These days, the former ambassador divides his time between Jakarta and Yogyakarta, counting the days before the KPK comes to take him away again. More than anything else, he said, he feels angry.

“How could this happen to me?” he said. “After all that I’ve done for this country?”

Fall from grace

It was 2003, Sudjadnan’s first year as secretary general at the ministry, when Slamet Hidayat, a former ambassador to Singapore, approached him with a renovation proposal.

“A street in the residential complex was in a bad shape and the private estates also needed renovation,” Sudjadnan said. “So they asked me to authorize the disbursement of funds.”

He said that as secretary general he frequently dealt with requests for funds. For the Singapore project, the ministry approved 3.2 million Singapore dollars ($2.5 million). “After that, more people came to me with similar requests,” he said.

A questionable payment connected to the project, the alleged bribe, was made by Slamet to the ministry and classified as a “donation.” Sudjadnan said the money was used to cover ministry expenses. He said these included motorcycles given away as prizes for raffles during the ministry’s anniversary, renovation requests from other officials and tips for security personnel.

“Nothing went into my pockets, but in the end I still had to compensate every penny with my own money,” he said.

A journalist who was close to Sudjadnan during his time as US ambassador, speaking to the Globe on condition of anonymity, quoted him as saying that “[I] was no angel” and that he had to “deal with a lot of money.”

In the Singapore project, prosecutors said total costs had been marked up by more than 1.1 million Singapore dollars and that Sudjadnan had gotten a kickback.

In court, Slamet said he had promised Sudjadnan $200,000 to “smooth things over.” Sudjadnan didn’t deny the payment, but he put the figure at $112,000.

The 2010 verdict put Slamet behind bars for three years. Sudjadnan received a lesser sentence because he had “admitted to and regretted his actions,” according to the judges.

“The defendant also has returned the money to the KPK and was courteous during the hearings,” Judge Anwar Usman said during the hearing. “Other issues that alleviate [his sentence] are that Sudjadnan is ill and that he has contributed to the country.”

The second graft claim against Sudjadnan concerns alleged “budget misappropriations” linked to 16 international seminars and conferences organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2004 and 2005.

“[We] have been investigating the case for a long time. The state loss incurred was about Rp 18 billion [$2 million],” KPK spokesman Johan Budi said.

The KPK has summoned several ministry officials and politicians for questioning, including Indonesia’s ambassador to Canada, Dienne Hardianti Moehario.

During the period in question, Dienne was the ministry’s inspector general, responsible for internal monitoring. In 2007 her team conducted an internal probe regarding the case, but the results were never made public.

Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) reports for financial years 2004 and 2005 also never mentioned irregularities linked to the international conferences.

Dienne failed to appear for questioning, saying she had not received a summons.

The KPK also summoned lawmakers Iqbal Alan Abdullah of the People’s Conscience Party (Hanura) and Evita Nursanty of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). The pair ran a company that organized one of the seminars.

Musician Erwin Gutawa, who had been asked to perform at a gala dinner for the ministry in 2004, and I Ketut Salam, director of event organizer Pacto Convex Niagatama, were also summoned by the KPK.

Pacto, which organized at least six events for the ministry, declined to comment when contacted by the Globe.

“If the KPK really want to prove the allegations, then they have to summon the event organizers and private partners for all conferences,” Sudjadnan said.

Saving Indonesia’s face

At the same time an Asean summit was going on in October 2003, Sudjadnan and Hassan Wirajuda, the foreign minister at the time, were summoned by then-President Megawati Sukarnoputri.

It was a year after the Bali bombings, Sudjadnan said, and Megawati was concerned about the uptick of foreign travel warnings. “She said that there was a regional leadership role Indonesia had to maintain,” he said.

It was decided that to improve the country’s image, Indonesia should host as many international conferences as possible, he said.

“Hassan then ordered all of the directors general to start lobbying various countries for this purpose,” he said.

One example Sudjadnan gave was the United Nations’ Conference on Disarmament. Indonesia’s ambassador in New York was instructed to try to get it moved from Brazil to Jakarta.

“He tried to persuade them by providing free airplane tickets, and convincing them of the better facilities Indonesia could provide. We also told them that with North Korea’s nuclear program, we needed to have one of these conferences held in Asia,” Sudjadnan said. “What I did was under the direct order of President Megawati herself.”

Sudjadnan took pride in putting together 16 international conferences in just two years, saying that for other countries it was more normal to have no more than four in a year.

“It never happened before in history, and probably will never happen again, and it was only because it was superbly urgent to defend the state’s sovereignty,” he said.

“In truth, the benefits Indonesia gained from the conferences are worth more than the amount of money the KPK alleges I misappropriated,” he said.

The Bali Regional Ministerial Meeting on Counterterrorism, held in 2004, for example, resulted in Australia making generous contributions to Indonesia’s counterterrorism unit, Sudjadnan said.

“I was also responsible for the 2005 tsunami summit, which brought in more than Rp 1 trillion in pledges for donations from other countries,” he said. “I only had 10 days to arrange everything and it was under the directive of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

“Altogether, the conferences may have cost the state at least Rp 81 billion, but in return the country got more than that.”

Financing for all 16 conferences, he said, was approved by the Ministry of Finance.

It was true, though, Sudjadnan said, that required tender processes were not followed. The reason, he said, was the urgency to hold so many conferences in such a short period of time.

“This just takes too long,” he said. Another regulation, he said, made it impossible for the ministry to hold the events itself.

“We had to be in a partnership with a private institution,” Sudjadnan said.

As for any legal consequences for not following the tender rules, Sudjadnan quoted Hassan as saying that since it was on the president’s instruction, it had to be done.

Out of luck?

Sudjadnan said he believed the KPK had used a final report on the conferences to press charges against him.

“In the report there was substantial evidence that a number of event organizers were directly appointed by the ministry, with my signature approving it,” he continued.

He said people who “did not like [him]” because of reforms he had introduced at the ministry had given the documents to the police.

Sudjadnan said that when he was appointed secretary general, he cut back on staff at the country’s 126 consulate offices worldwide.

“These people were doing administrative work but they had the same privileges as those who were doing diplomatic work, and they took advantage of it,” Sudjadnan said.

By eliminating the positions, he added, he had saved Indonesia up to $3.8 million per year.

“These people are often very senior, they have networks and are very experienced in what they do,” he said.

“They would approach me and say [for example], ‘Sir, Washington [embassy] has Rp 86 billion, you can decide which programs you actually want to carry out. Whether or not they happen, they’ll still appear on the financial report [and we can keep the money]’,” Sudjadnan said.

“Each person can easily siphon Rp 100 million to Rp 200 million a year.”

He said the people who soured on him tried to bring cases against him through the police. In one instance, he said, Hassan was able to get the case dropped by promising the police he would help them secure funding from abroad.

Hariyadi Wirawan, an international relations lecturer at the University of Indonesia, said international conferences, whatever their results, must be organized and held according to proper procedures.

“Even if Megawati or any president ordered it, the order would have been done in a general context, without going into the details,” he said. “And she would expect that everyone would act in accordance with all the proper procedures.”

Audits

Agus Sunaryanto, head of investigations at Indonesia Corruption Watch, said Sudjadnan was just the tip of the iceberg for corruption at the ministry.

“When a person like Sudjadnan has to face corruption charges twice, it means either corruption there is rampant, or he’s just unlucky,” Agus told the Globe.

He said graft at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs remained underexposed, even though the cases tended to happen right in front of people’s faces.

“If it’s not handled by the KPK, it won’t get much media coverage. Just look at Travelgate,” he said, referring to a scandal in 2010 over inflated travel expenses that cost the state about $200,000.

The ICW was the first to report Travelgate to the KPK, but the antigraft commission was unable to pursue the case after the Attorney General’s Office claimed that was already investigating.

“We were a bit upset when AGO said they had the case. We were expecting the KPK to net the big fishes,” Agus said.

Undeterred, the ICW went to the AGO to submit documents it claimed could prove Hassan’s involvement in the travel scandal.

“The AGO disregarded the documents and to this day Hassan has been in the clear,” Agus said.

When the trials over the travel scandal ended in July last year, 10 people, including four former ministry officials who had been working in the finance division and had once served under Sudjadnan, were sentenced to less than two years in jail.

“You also have to recall the case of our consuls and ambassador in Malaysia. They extorted millions from migrant workers but they all received lenient sentences,” Agus said.

An overview of ministry financial audits from 2005 to 2010 showed that with the exception of 2008 and 2010, all the reports had been marked with “a disclaimer of opinion,” meaning the financial data the BPK had to work with was so inaccurate that it could not provide an assessment.

In an audit of the 2009 financial reports, the BPK found deficits totaling Rp 56.2 billion that it believed represented theft by local staff members in Indonesian consulates in Bogota and Kuala Lumpur.

Other recent findings include unlawful payments at consulates in Helsinki, Tripoli, Abuja in Nigeria and Mexico City to the amount of $142,226; maladministration and financial report discrepancies at consulates in Dakar, Prague and Vanimo in Papua New Guinea totaling Rp 136 million; as well as discrepancies in construction work at the ministry’s Jakarta offices worth Rp 86.8 billion.

The BPK’s annual audit is not a comprehensive financial screening but rather a look at a sampling of ministry divisions. Every year it only audits six or seven consulates or embassies.

“Because Jakarta is so far away from all of these places, there is a lack of control of the embassies, not to mention the people appointed as ambassadors are either political outcasts or those who have been on really good terms with the president and were given the position as a reward,” Agus explained.

Hariyadi, the UI lecturer, said issues of recruitment had long been a concern at the ministry.

“Everybody wants to be a diplomat now because of the privileges one gets. Including politicians,” he said.

Ministry spokesman Michael Tene said that since Marty Natalegawa, the current foreign minister, took over two years ago, the ministry had done its best to reduce corruption.

“We are trying to force everyone to be more transparent in their activities, right from the planning stage up to evaluation,” Tene said.