TWO days after being declared a corruption suspect, Hariadi Sadono was startled by the arrival of an uninvited guest. The Director of the Java-Bali-Madura State Electricity Company (PLN) was visited by Joseph Kapoyos, who is known as a People’s Information Center (LIRA) activist, an organization affiliated to circles close to the Presidential Palace.

Joseph conveyed his sympathies. On May 5, 2009 Hariadi was named a suspect in a corruption case involving the procurement of customer management system software for PLN’s East Java distribution network in 2004-2008. During this period, Hariadi was the general manager of PLN’s branch in the East Java capital of Surabaya. The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) charged the 58-year-old man with causing Rp80 billion in state losses through the project.

After briefly exchanging courtesies, Joseph introduced Hariadi to a young man he had brought with him. “This is Yudi Prianto, Bibit Samad Rianto’s son,” he said. According to Hariadi, Joseph revealed that Yudi could help him deal with his predicament. The Bibit Samad Rianto mentioned by Joseph is of course none other than a Deputy Chairman of the KPK. “I didn’t want to discuss it any further. I asked them to meet with Agung,” Hariadi told Tempo in early February. Agung Hendradi Kuswarjanto is one of Hariadi’s confidants.

Two days later they returned and met with Agung. Yudi said that Hariadi was being treated badly. According to Agung, Yudi said, “Later I’ll talk to Bapak [Bibit]. By chance the KPK Deputy of Investigations, Pak Ade Rahardja, is one of Dad’s people.” This was on the condition that Hariadi used an attorney that Yudi would provide.

Agung asked them to allow him time to speak with Hariadi first. Following the meeting Yudi phoned several times to ask if they had made a decision.

Hariadi eventually agreed to Yudi’s offer. Agung and Yudi met again at the Es Teler 77 eatery in South Jakarta, not far from the PLN office. Yudi brought along Edison van Bullo, an instructor from the Jakarta Bhayangkara University, who was introduced as “one of Bapak’s people.” Agung meanwhile was accompanied by Sunaryo from PLN’s Legal Corporate Section. It was only then that Agung discovered that Yudi had not yet graduated from university. Speaking with Tempo in mid-February, Yudi said that Edison was his tutor who had been recommended to act as Hariadi’s attorney.

“How much will it cost?” asked Agung.

“One and a half billion rupiah,” said Yudi.

“Oh, no, no. For me it’s only 1 billion,” Edison countered quickly. “That’s just for me. For people inside the KPK it will cost more.”

The meeting broke up without an agreement being reached as Yudi was unable to guarantee Hariadi’s release. But he continued to maintain contact with Agung by phone or via SMS messages. In accordance with an offer made by Agung, Yudi tried asking Edison to reduce the price to Rp500 million. But Edison refused.

When asked to confirm this incident, Joseph claimed he had never offered to help Hariadi. “I went there to convey my sympathies. It was just a coincidence that I was tagging along with Yudi,” he said. Edison meanwhile said that no agreement over legal assistance was reached because Hariadi’s people “asked for help plus”.

Yudi continued to actively “maintain friendly ties,” as shown by several SMS messages saved on Agung’s cellphone. On June 28, 2009 at 09:27:49, he sent a message reading: “Mas, I’m in Kediri (East Java) with Mum and Dad. How are things? A suggestion from Bapak, my position is right under Mas Agung. Greetings to Pak Har…” Two days later he sent another message, “If it suits you (positive progress) we are going to try Thursday for the medical, Mas? Urgent…Thanks much…”

The message appears to be a follow-up to a telephone conversation. According to Agung, Yudi asked for Rp150 million to cover the cost of his father’s medical treatment. “But we never gave him one cent,” he said.

Yudi does not deny having discussed money with Agung but said he only wanted to borrow some money. On his relationship with Ade Rahardja, Bibit’s oldest child admits to knowing him. “I used to see him when he met with Bapak at home,” he said.

Yudi has a track record of involvement in several other cases. Take the regional budget corruption case in which Manado (North Sulawesi) Mayor Jimmy Rimba Rogi was named a suspect. Yudi reportedly received Rp500 million from Jimmy when the case was being investigated by the KPK. Jimmy denies that any money changed hands. Yudi meanwhile hung his head when asked about the matter. Wiping his face anxiously he sighed, “Oh dear…”

Accompanied by Joseph Kapoyos, Yudi met with Jimmy when he was being held at a cell in the North Jakarta District Police detention center. The suspect in a Rp48-billion regional budget corruption case wanted to be transferred to the Mobile Brigade detention center at Kelapa Dua in Depok, which was more comfortable. “I said it should be his attorney that proposes it, but his lawyer had failed to do so,” he said.

When Tempo met with him at his home to confirm the stories about his son, Bibit was enraged. “Who ordered you to write about this?” he said. “This is just an attempt to find fault with me.”

RICKY Rezani, the CEO of Altelindo Karyamandiri, an information technology company and PLN business partner, was phoned by an unknown person who claimed to be called Obi. Back in March 2009, Ricky’s boss Saleh Abdul Malik had been visited by the KPK on several occasions. The commission was investigating the case that had ensnared Hariadi Sadono. Altelindo had been his partner in the procurement of the customer management software project.

Obi informed Ricky that Saleh was soon to be declared a suspect. Initially Saleh did not believe Obi’s information was accurate. He started to become anxious however when questions by KPK investigators were the same as the information conveyed by Obi, whose real name he later discovered was Amoriza Harmonianto.

In June 2009 Saleh asked Ricky to contact the man who had long claimed to be a case broker. Following the meeting, Saleh came to believe that Obi would be able to help him in making his case easier. This was because the 53-year-old man appeared to know confidential details about his case and what had taken place when he was questioned by KPK investigators. Obi also claimed to be well-acquainted with KPK Deputy Director of Investigations, Ade Rahardja, and Ary Muladi, a businessman from Surabaya known to be able to assist in “dealing with” cases.

Obi then offered a “formal” and “informal” assistance package. For the formal service Obi proposed a lawyer named Tri Harnoko Singgih, the son of former Attorney General Agung Singgih, who he claimed was a first cousin. The fee would be Rp750 million. The informal service meanwhile would be conducted through “back door channels” and the fee “will be worked out after consulting first with KPK people.”

The next day, Obi phoned Rick and informed him that he was in the process of “negotiating with Ary Muladi and Ade Rahardja” at Jl. Panjang in West Jakarta. Two days later he visited Saleh’s office carrying a sheet of paper. It turned out to be a list of KPK officials that according to Obi would have to be bribed. The total fee came to around Rp8 billion. “That’s crazy, it’s way too much,” shrieked 39-year-old Saleh.

“That’s how it is with the KPK. Usually it’s Rp20 billion,” Obi replied.

The list only detailed the officials’ positions and fees: KPK chief Rp750 million, deputy Rp500 million, director Rp500 million, investigator Rp250 million and regional coordinator Rp400 million. Although he felt it was too heavy a price, Saleh agreed. He also asked to be allowed to pay it off in two installments so that he could see the results first: whether or not the money had the desired effect or not. The first half of the payment was made in three stages on July 9, 10 and 24 of 2009. The handover was backed up by a receipt signed by Obi.

Following the payments, Saleh was not summoned again by the KPK. He also sought confirmation from Tri Harnoko to find out whether the “informal” assistance had proceeded as planned. “According to Koko (Harnoko), Ary received the money,” he said. When asked for confirmation, Harnoko claimed to have met with Ary once at a restaurant in the Senopati area of South Jakarta.

At the meeting, Harnoko was accompanied by a staff member. Obi arrived alone, as did Ary. When asked by Obi about Saleh’s money, according to Harnoko, Ary answered that the matter was still in process. “He was unable to guarantee that the case would stop,” he said, “but he would ensure that Pak Saleh would only be declared a witness, not a suspect.”

The promise was not kept and Saleh was declared a suspect on November 2, 2009 and arrested immediately. The alumnus of a master’s program at the University of California, Los Angeles, was initially held in a cell at the North Jakarta District Police detention center, and then transferred to the Metro Jaya Regional Police. Feeling cheated and exploited, he reported the matter to the police. The police detained Obi for a month but he was later released.

Ary Muladi, who was accompanied by two of his lawyers, initially admitted to knowing Obi. But a minute later he corrected himself and denied involvement in the case. “If it’s true that I’m a case broker, I’d be really rich already!” he said.

But to his attorney, M. Yanuar, Ary confided to knowing Obi. Obi’s wife, said Yanuar, even went back and forth visiting Ary when he was detained at the National Police HQ detention center over the attempted bribery of senior KPK officials. “She asked about what was in Ary’s investigation file,” said Yanuar, a story confirmed by Sugeng Teguh Santoso, Ary’s other lawyer.

Upon hearing Ary’s denial, Obi just shook his head. On three separate occasions the 53-year-old man received Tempo at his home in Serpong, Tangerang. But he refused to recount the handover of the money. Obi only confirmed that the signature on the receipt was indeed his own. “If Ary Muladi wants to claim he doesn’t know me, yes well, that’s up to him,” he said.

Ade Rahardja also shook his head when asked for confirmation about case brokers who keep mentioning his name. “It’s up to you if you don’t believe me, but I don’t know and I have never met Ary Muladi, Obi, Yudi, or anyone else who claims they handle cases at the KPK,” he said. According to the police inspector-general, the case brokers who mentioned his name were just making up stories in order to exploit corruption suspects.

The KPK, said Ade, drafted a circular that is given to everyone who is being questioned, advising them not to give anything to investigators. People who are questioned also sign a statement saying they do not have any relationship with them, let alone having bribed anyone during the course of the investigation. “So, if someone claims to be a KPK person, then they are definitely a liar,” he said.

ARY Muladi, who initially operated behind closed doors, was forced to surface in July 2009. A police investigation report of Ary led to police naming two KPK deputies, Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M. Hamzah, as bribery suspects. Ary claimed that he gave Rp5.1 billion in bribes from businessman Anggoro Widjojo—a suspect in a corruption case involving the procurement of radio communication equipment at the Forestry Department—to Bibit and Chandra through Ade Rahardja.

Ary later retracted his confession saying he did not give the money directly to Ade but through a person named Yulianto—who was initially thought to be a woman and whose real identity remains a mystery. Yulianto was allegedly an acquaintance of his when he was a business partner of the Surabaya regional State Drinking Water Company.

But Ary has been totally inconsistent in his descriptions of Yulianto, the person he referred to as living in Surabaya. On November 6, 2009 for example, he told Koran Tempo that Yulianto stood as tall as his shoulder, had yellow skin, was plump, had straight upward-turned eyebrows and was a Javanese with a Surabaya accent.

The following day, after being questioned by the Verification & Fact Finding Team, he said that Yulianto was 5 centimeters taller than himself, had rather dark but clean skin like an indigenous Chinese, and straight eyebrows turning up at the end. He told Tempo that they met in mid-February 2009 at a Japanese restaurant in South Jakarta and that Yulianto looked like a Chinese, was chic, athletic, aged in his 40s and that the parting in his hair showed when it was caught by the wind.

Agung Hendradi Kuswarjanto, a confidant of Hariadi, immediately remembered a parson called Yudi Prianto when he heard Ary describe Yulianto. “Yulianto’s description fits Yudi exactly,” he said.

In order to confirm Yulianto’s identity, Tempo showed a photograph of Yudi to Ary. He pushed the photograph away and refused to look at it. But when the photograph was handed to him again he shook his head. “That’s not my Yulianto,” he said. “This is a Chinese person, Yulianto isn’t Chinese.”

Yudi Prianto said that right from the start he suspected his name would be connected with Yulianto. “I heard the name long before it surfaced, even before Bapak [Ary] became a suspect,” he said. The problem is that Ary only revealed the details of Yulianto’s description in November 6, 2009—two months after Bibit Samad Rianto was named by police as a suspect. How did he know? “A friend told me,” he said.

The stories of two case brokers appear to converge on the same name: Yudi Prianto bin (son of) Bibit Samad Rianto.

THE operations of case brokers at the KPK all follow a similar pattern: money is spent, the investigation stalls for some time, but then the “victim” is declared suspect and arrested. A lawyer who is familiar with the details of such deals said the bribes cannot in fact stop a case from being investigated. This is because the KPK does not have the authority to terminate a criminal investigation. What can be done, said the senior lawyer, is that the money can be used to negotiate what article a suspect is charged under.

KPK acting Chairman Tumpak Hatorangan Panggabean denies the allegation. He suspects that case brokers simply say that are acting in the name of KPK officials or the institution in order to deceive suspects. He also guarantees that there are no information leaks that could be taken advantage of by people outside the KPK for extortion. The reason being that closed-circuit television cameras are installed in all interview rooms, internal supervisors routinely examine the wealth of investigators and open meetings are held each week to discuss cases. “We have already questioned Ade Rahardja. There is no evidence he had a relationship with Ary Muladi,” said Tumpak. He does concede however that many reports on the extortion of suspects have ended up citing the two names.

In the case of the Regent of Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara, Iskandar, for example, Ary was reported for having asked for Rp4 billion. Ary promised to have the charges against the suspect in a Rp1.48-billion regional treasury corruption case reduced. In early May 2008, Iskandar’s wife Ida gave Rp1 billion to two of Ary’s couriers. Feeling that the bribe was too high, Ida planned to report the matter to former KPK Chairman Antasari Azhar. But then on the third floor of the commission building she saw Ary. “As a result Bu Ida didn’t feel comfortable going into Pak Antasari’s office,” said Arbab Paproeka, a former House of Representatives member from the National Mandate Party who accompanied Ida that day.

Ary denies having visited the KPK offices in the month cited by Arbab. He claims to have only dropped into the commission once in July 2009, when he went there to hand over a letter certifying that Anggoro Widjojo was ill and unable to be questioned. “The police said that I went there six times, but there is no evidence of it,” he said.

Case brokers with their sights set on victims of KPK investigations never seem to run out of ways to get money. When interviewed by a Tempo journalist in February, one case broker made the following offer.

+ How about if we cooperate?
- What do you mean?
+ I’ll find information on cases, you write it down.
- Then?
+ Later we’ll share the money two ways…!