JAKARTA (Reuters) -Indonesia’s deputy manpower minister was dismissed and charged with extortion on Friday after anti-graft investigators accused him of benefiting from illegal fees for the processing of safety permits.
The graft investigation was the first to implicate a member of President Prabowo Subianto’s cabinet. Prabowo, who was sworn in last October, has campaigned against corruption.
Deputy minister Immanuel Ebenezer, a member of Prabowo’s political party, was arrested with 10 other people investigated over the case, who include officials with the manpower ministry and two employees of a training provider company, anti-graft agency chief Setyo Budiyanto said at a press conference.
Immanuel, brought into the press conference wearing an orange vest, denied the extortion charge and apologised to the president, his family and the Indonesian people, without saying what he was apologising for.
Reuters could not immediately contact his lawyer.
He and the other defendants were accused of charging 6 million rupiah ($367.31) to process safety permits needed by construction, mining or manufacturing employees to get work, far higher than the official rate of 250,000 rupiah, since 2019, according to Budiyanto.
Proceeds from the additional, illegal fees were distributed to ministry officials, he said.
“If the employees did not pay as high as they were required to, the officials would blackmail them by delaying or refusing to process the safety certification application,” he said.
Fifteen cars, seven motorcycles and cash worth $12,600 were confiscated as evidence during investigators’ sting operations this week, Budiyanto added.
An extortion charge carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in Indonesia.
Presidential spokesperson Prasetyo Hadi said Prabowo had signed a decree dismissing Immanuel from his ministerial post.
“We’ll let the legal process continue and we hope this will be a lesson for all of us, especially for cabinet members and all government officials…, to work hard in eradicating corruption,” Hadi said in a video statement released late on Friday.
The manpower ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
($1 = 16,335.0000 rupiah)
(Reporting by Ananda Teresia, additional reporting by Stefanno Sulaiman; editing by Gayatri Suroyo, Philippa Fletcher and Mark Heinrich)
