Soekarno-Hatta Airport immigration chief arrested
Sita W. Dewi and Andreas D. Arditya, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 02/27/2012 1:44 AM
The Jakarta Police have arrested Rochadi Iman Santoso, the chief
of the immigration office at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, for
allegedly forging travel documents.
“The suspect allegedly
violated Article 63 of the Criminal Code by forging travel documents,”
Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said on Sunday. “Based on
the allegations, we arrested him,” Rikwanto said.
Rochadi was
arrested on Friday by officers from the Jakarta Police’s state security
subdirectorate for allegedly issuing a fake travel document for
Singaporean Toh Ke Ngsiong.
The document stated that Toh arrived
in Indonesia on Aug. 5, 2009, on Tiger Airways and departed on Aug. 6,
2009, on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
Toh allegedly used the letter
in a legal case involving Toh and local company PT Makindo, which
questioned the authenticity of the letter and reported it to the police.
Upon checking with the Law and Human Rights Ministry,
investigators discovered that the document was not genuine. Rochadi’s
arrest was first stern action taken against what critics have called
unscrupulous immigration officials.
The immigration office has
been criticized for failing to implement travel bans levied on witnesses
and major corruption suspects, including, for example, former tax
officer and graft convict Gayus H. Tambunan.
Gayus received a
two-year sentence for holding a forged passport in the name of Sonny
Laksono in violation of the 1992 Immigration Law.
The sentence
came in addition to his 10-year prison term for bribing a judge and a
police officer, issuing inaccurate judgments on tax objections and
conspiring to craft a document to illicitly unfreeze Rp 28 billion
(US$3.05 million) in a bank account.
Gayus paid US citizen John
Jerome Grice $20,000 for the forged passport, which he used to travel
abroad after he bribed his way out of detention.
Maryoto Sumadi,
the spokesman of the Law and Human Rights Ministry’s Immigration
Directorate, declined to comment, saying he had not been officially
apprised of Rochadi’s arrest. “After I learned of the alleged arrest
from the media, I tried to contact Rochadi but failed,” Maryoto said.
— Bagus BT Saragih contributed to this report
