Jakarta. Two high ranking police officers were found guilty of taking bribe from graft convict Djoko Tjandra during separate trials on Wednesday.
Inspector General Napoleon Bonaparte was sentenced to four and a half years for accepting US$370,000 and SIN$200,000 from Djoko, according to the verdict delivered by the Jakarta Anti-Corruption Court.
Hours earlier, the same court handed three and a half years’ imprisonment to Brigadier General Prasetijo Utomo for taking US$100,000 from the same man.
Both officers received the money in return for facilitating Djoko’s arrival and trip in Indonesia while he was fleeing his own graft conviction.
Djoko was a graft fugitive when he returned to the country last year to request a review against his conviction, renew his ID card and obtain an Indonesian passport despite attempts by prosecutors to arrest him since 2009.
Their jail terms are one year more than the recommended sentence by prosecutors.
A defiant Napoleon dismissed the verdict as “personal harassment” and announced a plan to appeal.
“I would rather die than to have my family’s honor harassed like this. I reject the verdict and will lodge an appeal,” he told the panel.
Napoleon and Prasetijo are accused of removing Djoko from the Interpol wanted list to clear his way to the country. Both men have been in duty for 30 years.
Djoko was eventually arrested in Kuala Lumpur on July 30 following public uproar over his immunity during his return under the nose of law enforcement officials.
It was later found that his return and travel were facilitated by several high-ranking police officers, immigration officials and a female prosecutor, allowing him to get all the documents he wanted and travel freely between cities.
Prasetijo also helped him produce a coronavirus free certificate so that Djoko could travel by plane during his stay in the country between May and June.
Napoleon was a senior staff at the Interpol’s National Central Bureau (NCB) in Jakarta when Djoko was removed from the wanted list in 2014. He last served as the head of the National Police’s International Relations and Transnational Crimes Division that oversees the NCB before being stripped of his duties during investigation into the scandal.
Police believe that Napoleon is responsible for clearing Djoko from the police global alert system, paving way for the convict to get through the immigration checks when entering Indonesia.
Prasetijo was the first to be implicated with the scandal after it emerged that he provided documents that allowed Djoko to travel between cities in June despite an arrest warrant issued by prosecutors in 2009.
Back then, Djoko was convicted of corruption and sentenced to two years in prison in a case emanating from the debt settlement between Bank Bali and the now-defunct Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA).
Djoko has already left the country when the ruling was delivered in June 2009.
In addition to his earlier sentence, Djoko was again convicted for document forgery related to his trips last year and sentenced to two and a half years in December.
Prosecutor Pinangki Sirna Malasari received the most severe punishment in this scandal when she was handed a ten years’ imprisonment last month for her role in channeling the bribe money and serving as Djoko’s contact in Indonesia.