Senator Wants Total Investigation Of E-ID Card Scandal

JAKARTA March 16 - Deputy chairman of the Regional Representatives Council (DPD) Farouk Muhammad asks the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to investigate anyone implicated in the e-ID card corruption case. "KPK has to bring the case to the open and investigate anyone without exception. KPK has to remain professional by not allowing itself to be led by political interest," Farouk Muhammad said in a news release here on Tuesday night. Last week KPK brought to the court the e-ID card case with two senor former officials of the Home Affairs Ministry Irma and Sugiharto as suspects. In the indictment the KPK prosecutor said former Home Affairs Minister, former secretary general of the ministry and more than 50 lawmakers and former lawmakers to have received a share in the embezzled money. Some of the former lawmakers have become active minister and governors and Parliament speaker. Farouk, a senator from West Nusa Tenggara said a number of hose included in the indictment had hurriedly returned their share of the embezzled money to KPK, and there are indications that they returned the money hoping to drop the charge against them. "By returning the money would save them from criminal charge," he said. Earlier young cadre of the Golkar party Ahmad Doli Kurnia asked KPK not to back down and became hesitant in its commitment in unveiling the case by big names implicated in the corruption involving Rp5.9 trillion in state fund. President Joko Widodo has expressed his disappointment over the corruption saying it had disrupted the process of e-ID card distribution system all over the country.