The Beef Import Game: Between Basuki Hariman and Patrialis Akbar

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - For 10 months, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has been working on the case of Basuki Hariman, the owner of beef importer Sumber Laut Perkasa, for bribing Constitutional Court (MA) Chief Justice Patrialis Akbar. No one else has since been named as receiving bribes from Basuki, even though prosecutors in both of their cases mentioned suspected bribes flowing to officials at the Directorate-General of Customs.

When reading the charges against Basuki last July, prosecutor Lie Putra Setiawan said that one of Basuki¡¯s companies was suspected of smuggling foreign beef through Tanjung Priok Port. "There was a public report which was received by the KPK about meat smuggling last March," said Lie.

This suspected smuggling referred to seven shipping containers belonging to Krsna Jaya which were sent from Australia to Tanjung Priok early in January 2016. Krsna Jaya is one of Basuki`s companies, located in Surabaya, East Java. Based on import notification documents for that company`s goods, those seven containers contained wet blue leather. The import documents stated that the container came from Australia.

As the story goes, those containers drew the suspicion of port inspectors because they found refrigeration of minus 20 degrees Celsius. If those containers really did contain processed leather, those refrigeration units would damage the product. After checking the origin of the containers, a discrepancy was discovered, as the containers had arrived from Singapore, not from Australia as was mentioned in the import documents.

Officials sealed those containers. They suspected that the seven containers contained illegal meat concealed as processed leather. Officials in the field requested permission to conduct a physical check. Rather than being given permission, an investigator at the Ministry of Finance said that the chief of customs office intervened in Tanjung Priok. Other investigators said that central customs officials often went to the port to prevent the contents of those containers from being inspected.

In the end, a well-attended check was made by central and Tanjung Priok customs officials on January 22. Amazingly, the check was done at the Krsna Jaya warehouse in Bogor, West Java, not at the port. This means that those sealed containers were able to leave the port area. The suspicions of officials was borne out. Those containers did not contain leather, but frozen meat.

Strangely, rather than detaining the containers, central customs officials ordered that they be released. On January 29, the Tanjung Priok Customs office issued a written approval to release items number 42160 and 42151.

Read the full article in last week's edition of Tempo English Magazine