Pandemonium broke out at Jakarta’s international airport Wednesday as journalists and cameramen mobbed a young tax official who returned from Singapore for questioning over alleged corruption. Gayus Tambunan, 30, fled to the neighbouring city-state last week as police tried to question him in connection to suspicions over 25 billion rupiah (2.75 million dollars) he has amassed in a bank account.
He made no comment to dozens of reporters who shouted questions as police led him into a car outside Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport. Angry members of the public shouted “thief!” and “go and die!" A court on March 12 acquitted him of embezzlement in relation to his suspicious wealth but he is now suspected of bribing top police to escape jail.
His lawyer and a senior detective have also been named suspects. A tax official in his position would only earn about 200 dollars a month but Gayus lives with his wife and three children in an upscale mansion, drives luxury cars and has been unable to properly account for his wealth. He was apprehended in Singapore by Indonesian police on Tuesday near his hotel, the five-star Mandarin Orchard on Orchard Road, an up-market shopping strip.
Police are still searching for his wife, another low-ranking civil servant who has also gone missing and is believed to be in Singapore, Antara news agency reported. Attorney General Hendarman Supandji said that unlike other Indonesian corruption suspects hiding in Singapore, Gayus did not have powerful friends and therefore could not hold out for long.
“Businessmen have a wide reach to anywhere, they have no boundaries. Civil servants have limited reach,” he said. Indonesia and Singapore signed an extradition treaty in 2007 but it is in abeyance due to Singaporean attempts to link it with defence ties.
The Gayus case has exposed deep corruption in the tax office and stoked public anger at the failure of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to live up to his promises to stamp out rampant graft.
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