For the best overall guide to what has happened in the Budget leak/hack scandal, see the just-published article by Henry Cooke: What we know and don’t know about the Budget ‘hack’. Amongst his rundown on the background to the scandal and the theories offered so far, Cooke points out that, rather than being hacked, the Treasury website might simply have been scanned by Google, allowing a cache of pages to become available to someone who has handed them on to the National Party.

Another leading explanation for how the Treasury’s Budget information was released early to National comes down to a simple but obvious idea that parliamentary staffers looked for and found the information on the Treasury website. This would also explain how National leader Simon Bridges could be so categorical in his insistence that his scoops weren’t based on hacking or illegality.

According to this theory, National had one of its Parliamentary staffers monitoring the Treasury website in the days leading up to Budget Day, constantly using the frontpage search bar on the site to look for “Budget 2019”. The hope being that at some stage some Budget documents would be loaded onto the site momentarily, in anticipation of Thursday’s publication, before they were then locked away for safety.

The story goes that by searching every five minutes or so, the National staffer eventually hit the jackpot when documents or pages turned up with the goods. It might have taken hundreds or even thousands of searches over a couple of days.

In fact, National Party pollster and blogger David Farrar has outlined a similar scenario based on his previous experience as a parliamentary staffer: “when I worked for the Opposition in 2000 or 2001, I recall waiting for the Government to release the Police crime stats. They always put a positive spin on it. I went to the Police website and looked at last year’s stats. I also looked at the previous year. They had the same URL format. I changed the year to the current one, and hey presto I had the official crime states four hours before the Government was due to release them” – see: My guess as to what happened.

Farrar argues that something similar may have happened, and it therefore wouldn’t constitute hacking: “So my guess is something similar has happened. That possibly the material was put up on a website of some sort and someone found it. Treasury are calling it hacking because they didn’t think it was open to the public. But there is a difference between hacking a secure computer system, and locating information that is on the Internet (even if hidden). Was there any cracking of passwords for example?”

But do such explanations fit with what Treasury are saying when they claim that their site has been “deliberately and systematically hacked”? It’s arguable either way. Certainly, some tech-specialists seem to think that something much more sophisticated must have happened – especially based on the fact that Treasury has called in the Police. For one of the most in-depth discussions of the potential hacking, see John Anthony’s Budget 2019: ‘They’ll remember it as the budget that got hacked’.

Despite some tech specialists believing that a sophisticated hack has occurred, one expert believes a software application might have simply found the material on the Treasury website: “Kiwi cyber security consultancy Darkscope technical director Joerg Buss said a likely scenario was that someone used a ‘spider or crawler’ program to find hidden content in the Treasury website. Such software may have uncovered Budget 2019 files which had not been protected properly, he said.”

It could also be as simple as using Google to search for the material, which is covered by Juha Saarinen in his article, Conspiracy or cock-up? Strong evidence Treasury published Budget accidentally – rather than a hack. He says that “screenshots of the results from a Google search for ‘estimates of appropriation 2019/2020’ are circulating on Twitter suggest that the data was published accidentally.”

Of course, the fact that Treasury has called in the Police would suggest that the government department believes that something much more sinister or malevolent has occurred. However, care needs to be taken in reading too much into this – especially since the Police haven’t even confirmed that they have agreed to investigate, except to say that they are assessing Treasury’s request.

Furthermore, whenever governments and officials call in the police or make claims that criminal actions have occurred in the political sphere, we should always be very sceptical. It’s the oldest trick in the bureaucratic book – to divert attention or to impugn an opponent with charges that they are mixed up in criminal activity. That’s not necessarily the case over the controversial budget leaks – it’s still far too early to tell what has happened.

This is certainly the argument made today by leftwing blogger No Right Turn, who suggests that government officials have a tendency, when they’ve made mistakes, to try to point the finger elsewhere, often using rather draconian measures to do so – see: Treasury, “hacking”, and incentives.

Here’s his main point about how politicians and officials are inclined to bring the police into politics: “Unfortunately the natural instincts of power in New Zealand are to double down rather than admit a mistake, and to call in the police when embarrassed – just look at the tea tape, or Dirty Politics. With those, we saw police raiding newsrooms and journalist’s homes. I’m wondering if we’re going to see police raiding the opposition this time. Which would be highly damaging to our democracy.”

The blogger says that “the bureaucratic incentive towards arse-covering and blame-avoidance pushes that to be reclassified as nefarious ‘hacking’, and that incentive gets stronger the higher up the chain (and the further away from IT knowledge) you get.”

Here’s his own explanation for the release of the information: “The most likely scenario is that Treasury f**ked up and left them lying around on their web-server for anyone to read, and National or one of its proxies noticed this and exploited it. Accessing unprotected data on a public web-server isn’t ‘hacking’ in any sense of the word – it’s just browsing.”

The onus is therefore on the Treasury to be much more transparent about what has happened writes Danyl Mclauchlan, saying a “brief technical explanation about what the ‘hack’ amounted to would be a lot more useful than all the bluster and nebulous waffle we’ve heard so far” – see: Budget hacking scandal: About time Treasury told us what actually happened.

Mclauchlan says that if it turns out that the leak has simply come from information on the Treasury website, “then we’ll be talking about the resignation of the Treasury Secretary, rather than National Party leader.”

The No Right Turn blogger doesn’t see the Government delivering such transparency any time soon: “neither Treasury nor their Minister has any interest in that (Ministers are rarely interested in incompetence in their own agencies, because it makes them look bad for allowing it). As for us, the public, we’re the loser, stuck with an incompetent, arse-covering public agency which has just failed on one of its most important tasks” – see: Treasury owes us answers.

He argues that the decision to go to the Police means that Treasury can now sidestep such accountability: “conveniently, by referring the matter to the police Treasury has ensured that they can never do that. It might prejudice the police investigation, you see. OIA requests can be refused to avoid prejudice to the maintenance of the law, and anyone who actually tells anyone anything can be prosecuted. Accountability of course goes out the window”.

That doesn’t get National off the hook, however, if the party has done something illegal in the way they have procured or used the Budget information. One lawyer who knows a lot about hacks is Steven Price, and he argues that the release by National of the information was not in “the public interest”, and that it appears to have “broken the law relating to Breach of Confidence” – see: Budget leak: Nats’ behaviour “entirely appropriate”?

Price says that he is “irritated at the sanctimoniousness of Simon Bridges’ denial that the Nats had done ‘anything approaching’ illegality.” He does admit however, that if National have obtained the Budget information “through some area of Treasury’s (or some other government) website that was technically publicly accessible, then that would at least raise arguments that it wasn’t confidential in the first place, because it was in the public domain.”

Herald political editor Audrey Young is also less than impressed with how Bridges has dealt with the matter today, saying: “Simon Bridges needed to do two things today when he fronted the news media about allegations of hacking Treasury and he did neither. He needed to say, at least in general terms, how he received the leak of Budget of documents. And he needed to say he had contacted the police to offer them any assistance they needed in their investigation” – see: Simon Bridges needed to do two things today and he did neither.

But for another view on the politics of it all, and an explanation of why Bridges’ manoeuvres have been smart, see Brigitte Morten’s National plays strong hand over politics jackpot. She argues that it’s in the public interest for National to be able to dispute the Government’s narrative over Budget spending, and to be able to point out the “lower than expected spending” in areas such as health “that the government doesn’t want you to reflect on.”

Finally, for a recent minor – but extremely colourful – Treasury controversy, involving the use of a transformative wellbeing experiment for staff, see Danyl Mclauchlan’s must-read investigation: Peace, Rest and the Monkey Emoji Moon: playing Heartwork cards at Treasury.

By Marguerite Afra Sapiie in Jakarta

As tensions intensified between incumbent Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and challenger Prabowo Subianto over the expected results in the Indonesia election last week, the rival camps scrambled on their own to prove that their respective candidate was the rightful winner of the poll.

The Jokowi-Ma’ruf Amin ticket, which is predicted to win the election as shown by the quick-count results, has even decided to up the ante against Prabowo’s victory claims, as the campaign team publicly opened their own process of final vote counting.

The campaign team also alleged that Prabowo, who had declared himself the new president, citing his own camp’s internal real count, has manipulated the public by not using complete data on the vote counts.

READ MORE: Indonesian election exposes ethnic, religious divides

Jokowi’s camp has employed around 250 people working on three different shifts, 24 hours every day to count the C1 vote tally forms from polling stations across the country in a “war room”, located in Gran Melia hotel in South Jakarta.

The room, which featured TV screens showing real-time vote counting, is open for everyone who wants to monitor the real vote count, Jokowi-Ma’ruf Amin campaign team executive Moeldoko said.

-Partners-

“We have nothing to hide here and we want everything to be open, so there won’t be doubts or scepticism anymore […] our mechanism and standards for the real count are also accountable,” Moeldoko said on Sunday.

Similar to the real count by the General Elections Commission (KPU), the team working in the facility counts votes based on a digitised version of the C1 forms, which record the final vote count of each polling station at the district level, from hundreds of thousands of polling booths across Indonesia.

Real time data
The witnesses at all polling stations sent the photo of C1 forms to the team, established under the Witness Directorate of the campaign team, which would input the data in real time. The coordinator of witnesses in each district was responsible for overseeing and clarifying the data sent by the witnesses.

As of 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, the team had input around 23.8 million votes from 119,216 polling stations, or 14 percent of the 813,350 across Indonesia.

The data so far showed that Jokowi-Ma’ruf lead with 56.16 percent against Prabowo-Sandiaga’s 45.84 percent.

Early vote counts conducted by a number of pollsters, including the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Cyrus Network as well as Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) showed the Jokowi-Ma’ruf Amin ticket had 54 to 56 percent of the vote against Prabowo-Sandiaga Uno’s 44 to 46 percent.

In a controversial move, the former Army general declared his victory hours after the election and said the camp’s internal real count showed that he had won the race with 62 percent of the vote from over 320,000 polling stations across the country.

Prabowo-Sandiaga Uno campaign team spokesman Andre Rosiade explained that the real count was derived after their witnesses sent the photos of C1 forms to the Prabowo-Sandiaga campaign team as well as to the headquarters of political parties in the coalition.

Witness Directorate deputy director Lukman Edy, however, said the team had found that Prabowo’s claim was not supported by reliable data and in the revealed cases, the rival camp did not put the results from all polling stations in the province into the equation.

Quick-count results
In Lampung, for instance, the war room has gathered around 50 percent of votes, which put Jokowi in the lead with 57.6 percent against Prabowo’s 42.33 percent. The tally was already similar to quick-count results by pollsters, such as SMRC which put Jokowi at 57.7 percent.

“[Prabowo’s camp] put our votes at 40.91 percent while they won with 59.09 percent [in Lampung]. After we looked into it, turns out they only used data from 30 polling stations,” Lukman said.

A similar situation happened in Jakarta, with Prabowo’s campaign team declaring victory in the province by only counting 300 out of thousands of polling stations, he said.

Prabowo-Sandiaga Uno campaign team spokesperson Dahnil Anzar Simanjuntak said the team did not think too much about the analysis done by Jokowi’s camp, and said they would keep focusing on monitoring the real count. The KPU is expected to announce the final results on May 22.

Meanwhile, in what could be seen as an attempt to diffuse tensions, Jokowi has appointed Luhut Panjaitan — a retired Army general — as his envoy to engage in talks with the Gerindra Party patron.

According to Luhut, he and Prabowo had talked on the phone, describing their conversation as “full of laughter” with “a little bit of nostalgia”.

“Pak Prabowo is a good man […] I know him as a very rational man who can think clearly,” Luhut told journalists on Monday, “So I just want to suggest that he does not listen too much to those whose ideas are somewhat baseless.

“I truly want Pak Prabowo to leave behind a legacy as a leader who participates in strengthening democracy in Indonesia and respects any decision by the KPU,” Luhut said.

Marguerite Afra Sapiie is a Jakarta Post reporter.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Rappler

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism has responded to what it called President Rodrigo Duterte’s “broadsides” aimed at PCIJ’s recent reports on the Duterte family’s wealth, saying there was no reason for the President to “lose his cool”.

“The PCIJ report was built on the Dutertes’ own declarations in their SALNs (Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth) and data from official government records,” said PCIJ executive director Malou Mangahas in a letter sent to media groups.

“PCIJ had wished only for the Dutertes to offer clear, direct, straightforward replies to our queries. Instead of blaming PCIJ for the report. Mr Duterte should turn his attention [to] his deputies, notably Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo, for the failure of [the] Office of the President to attend to PCIJ’s request letters, over the last 5 months.”

READ MORE: The Duterte millions – Rodrigo, Sara, Paolo mark big spikes in wealth while in office

DUTERTE: Rich man, poor man, mayor, President. Graphic: PCIJ

On Saturday, April 6, the President claimed it was money driving investigative reports. While he did not mention PCIJ by name, the comments were made in the aftermath of the investigative group’s three-part report, “The Dutertes: Wealth Reveal & Riddles”.

“Makita mo ‘yung utak ng mga investigative journalism kaya…. Pera-pera lang. Binabayaran ‘yan kung gano’n kalaki. Pati nung lawyering ko,” said the President.

-Partners-

(Look at how those in investigative journalism think…. It’s all about money. They get paid a huge sum if the story is that big. They even included my lawyering.)

The series reported that members of the Duterte family may have participated in conflicts of interest, declared assets inconsistently, were affiliated with an unregistered law firm, were found with “sudden, sharp” increases in wealth while in public office, and emerged from elections with their personal funds largely intact.

Opaque data
President Duterte and his children Sara and Paolo separately and together offer token or opaque data that, under the law, they are required to reveal in their SALNs
Duterte, Sara, Paolo mark big spikes in wealth, cash while in public office

How and why their fortunes are rising remain a mystery; the numbers do not seem to add up, reports PCIJ

The President said his late mother, Soledad Roa Duterte, was responsible for the family’s wealth.

“Putang ina ninyo. Hoy, ‘yung mga dilaw, all the time I was with my mother. Maski na noong mayor na ako, ang nagpapakain sa akin nanay ko. ‘Yung nanay ko ang may pera. ‘Yun ang nanay ko nag-iwan ng pera sa amin. Pero kung magkano, eh bakit sabihin ko sa inyo?” asked Duterte.

(You sons of whores. You yellows, I was with my mother all the time. Even when I was still mayor, it was my mother who fed me. My mother was the one who had the money. It was my mother who left money for us. But as to how much, why would I tell you?)

Better to have responded
PCIJ said it has reported on the wealth and the controversies of 5 presidents before Duterte: Benigno Aquino III, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Joseph Estrada, Fidel Ramos, and Corazon Aquino.

PCIJ detailed its efforts to solicit comments from the Duterte camp in letters sent beginning October 2018. According to Mangahas, it would have been “far better had Mr Duterte, daughter and Davao City Mayor Sara, and son and former Davao City vice mayor Paolo granted PCIJ’s request for comments, and possibly sit-down interviews, before the story ran.”

“Eh ngayon, tinitira kami ng mga anak ko. All about lawyering. Ano ba naman pakialam nila na what happened to my law office?” Duterte said in Iloilo City.

(Now, my children and I are being attacked. All about lawyering. What do they care about what happened to my law office?)

Among its findings, PCIJ reported that “the President, Sara, and Paolo separately and together offer a muddled mix of token or opaque data” in their SALNs.

PCIJ found spikes in the net worth of Duterte and his children. PCIJ said the President, Sara, and Paolo “have all consistently grown richer over the years, even on the modest salaries they have received for various public posts, and despite the negligible retained earnings reflected in the financial statements of the companies they own or co-own.”

The numbers, said the investigative group, “do not seem to add up.”

The Pacific Media Centre and Pacific Media Watch collaborate with Rappler and the Philippine Centre for Investigative Journalism.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

by Dr Bryce Edwards

The week before Christmas was dominated by what may actually have been the most important political issue of the year in New Zealand – revelations that government agencies have spied on New Zealanders through the use of private investigators. The matter ended up being somewhat buried in the end-of-year chaos, and perhaps conveniently forgotten about by politicians with an interest in the issue remaining unresolved.

Yet the story isn’t going away. Today, the Herald published revelations about how the private investigations firm Thompson & Clark was previously employed by government-owned Southern Response insurance to review Official Information Act answers about the use of the private investigations firm itself – see Lucy Bennett’s Megan Woods seeks answers on Southern Response’s use of private investigators.

Here’s the key part of the story: “In January 2017, when Woods was the opposition spokeswoman on the Christchurch quake recovery, Thompson & Clark Investigations Ltd (TCIL) invoiced Southern Response $2070 for reviewing a response to an Official Information Act request from the Labour Party research unit on its use of TCIL.”

The article reports on how “TCIL also appears to advise Southern Response on how to circumvent public scrutiny.” For example, Thompson & Clark gave the following advice to Southern Response’s chief executive: “to get around disclosure, privacy and OIA issues, we normally set up a discreet email address for you – in Gmail or similar … do you want us to set up a discreet email account for you – or do you want to?”

The original “explosive” SSC report

Despite the State Services Commission report being released during the busy period just prior to Christmas – leading to what some see as a lack of media coverage and scrutiny of the issues – there have been some excellent articles and columns published about it.

Andrea Vance produced some of the best coverage of the report and the aftermath. Her first report, Security firm spied on politicians, activists and earthquake victims, detailed the full extent of what had been uncovered by the report into government agencies using private investigators. Overall, she said that the “explosive report details a slew of damning revelations”.

Vance followed this up with an in-depth article, Public service bosses ignored warnings about Thompson & Clark for years, which revealed that “for a decade public service bosses ignored the warnings about Thompson & Clark. Their tentacles were everywhere. Dozens of ministries and agencies used their services – and yet no-one in the upper echelons of the public service questioned their reach or influence.”

According to Vance, “officials became drunk on the power of the information offered up by security firms like Thompson & Clark. It allowed them to keep tabs on their critics and stave off any reputational damage.” She also argues that “A cavalier attitude to personal and sensitive information, and a troubling disregard for the democratic right to protest, was allowed to flourish within the public service over 15 years and successive governments.”

Hamish Rutherford produced some excellent analysis, explaining: “In an age where the use of contractors is already under scrutiny, a string of government agencies have effectively outsourced snooping, in some cases for highly questionable reasons. In some cases this was done with a lack of clear contracts, creating a fertile atmosphere for mission creep” – see: Use of private investigators exposes carelessness about role of the government.

Rutherford writes about how remarkable it is that public servants weren’t aware (according to the report) that what was going on was unacceptable. He therefore concludes: “we are reading about public servants who appeared to be seduced by private investigators, who decided to make their job easier without considering the implications for democratic rights, or the need to remain neutral. Weeding out improper behaviour may take work, but it seems the report exposes examples where public servants need to be told what their job involves, which would be a far more fundamental problem.”

RNZ’s Tim Watkin also has some strong analysis of what occurred, saying that the report on the state snooping “is a bit of a page-turner and a terrifying read for anyone who cares about the integrity of the public sector” – see: Heart of Darkness in the public sector.

According to Watkin, the situation is perplexing, given the risk-averse nature of the public service: “My concern is what this says about the culture at the heart of our public service. How did leaders who are by the very definition of their roles meant to be servants of the public decide that this level of covert surveillance was a good idea? Government agencies are typically so risk averse these days that they have multiple managers signing off press statements and an inability to make a decision on which pencils or toilet paper to buy without first clearing it with the minister’s office. Yet they are willing to subject those ‘ordinary New Zealanders” to secret surveillance.”

Possibly, Watkin says it’s the very risk-averse nature of the current public service that has caused them to be more open to snooping on citizens: “there seems to be a deep-seated sense of butt-covering and paranoia”. This is the very point made by Gordon Campbell in his blogpost, On why Thompson + Clark are just the tip of the iceberg.

In recent years, according to Campbell, the public service has become politicised, meaning that public servants have become more sensitive to the political needs of their ministers rather than the public good. This means that snooping on citizens and protestors starts becoming sensible, and to dissent against breaches of ethics in the public service has become much more dangerous for your career.

Not surprisingly, some of the strongest condemnation of state snooping on citizens has come from those organisations known to be affected – especially environmental groups. Former Green co-leader, and now Greenpeace head, Russel Norman emphasises the anti-democratic nature of what has been going on: “The chilling effect of being under constant and intrusive surveillance for simply campaigning on important social issues, fundamentally corrodes what it means to live in a free and democratic society. We’ve learnt that under the previous government, no-one was safe from being spied on if they disagreed with government policy” – see: Rotten to the core: The chilling truth revealed by the SSC report.

Norman concludes: “The State Services Commission (SSC) investigation may well be one of the most important examinations into the inner workings of the state that we’ve seen in New Zealand. I’d go as far as to call it our Watergate moment.”

If that sounds like the expected complaints of an activist, then it’s also worth reading what former United Future leader Peter Dunne had to say in his column, Only a first step in the data battle.

Dunne explains what has occurred as being “a gross breach of that implicit covenant between the Government and its citizens”, and he raises serious questions about how much more privacy is being curtailed by government agencies. In particular: “Was any information provided, formally or informally, to the intelligence services by Thompson and Clark, and was any information gathered at the behest of the intelligence services?”

Newspaper editorials have also condemned what has been uncovered in the public service. The Otago Daily Times has a strongly-worded editorial about the dangers to democracy uncovered in the report: “It blasts a warning about the insidious nature of state power and the need for vigilance and protection. Those who would disregard civil liberties for what they might think is the greater good should think again. Big brother and big sister are an ever-present threat. This is even more so in the electronic age. It was first thought the internet might lead to more freedom and more opportunity for dissent. But the massive losses of privacy, the ease with which data is collected and modern data analysis all hand more potential power and surveillance ability to big business and big government” – see: An ‘affront to democracy’.

In Christchurch, The Press has been asking important questions about what the report has revealed – see the editorial: More questions about spies and the public service. Here are the concluding questions: “The public needs to know more about this scandal that is so contrary to the way we expect our public servants to behave on our behalf. The public wants to know who approved of this surveillance, why it was considered necessary in a democracy and, perhaps most important of all, how much was really known about it by the ministers in charge.”

Will anything actually be done about the spying scandal?

The biggest risk to arise out of the controversial investigation into government agencies’ misuse of spying on citizens is that nothing further will now occur. So despite new stories being published about the state surveillance, there’s a danger that we are coming towards the end of the scandal, with no significant reform being offered to correct the problems.

Although the Thompson & Clark firm has been discredited by the scandal, many are arguing that they are not actually the real problem. For example, Andrea Vance says: “although they took advantage, Thompson & Clark aren’t responsible for public service culture and the undermining of democratic rights. That lies with Peter Hughes. For public confidence to be fully restored, the public service must demonstrate accountability and accept culpability, starting from the top down.”

Perhaps it’s time for a proper official and independent commission of inquiry into the spying problems in the public service. Security analyst Paul Buchanan has been arguing for this. And Gordon Campbell agrees: “given that the Thompson+ Clark problem is a by-product of the politicisation of the public service, security analyst Paul Buchanan is dead right in calling for a public inquiry. Only a wide-ranging investigation can address the attitudinal issues and power relationships between ministerial staff and public servants, of which Thompson + Clark are merely one of the end results.”

Tim Watkin has also argued that more needs to happen: “The proper response to this report is not a few hours of tut-tuting, the Prime Minister expressing formulaic concern that the spying was “disturbing” and the symbolic resignation of a single chair. No, the proper response is a change to the public sector culture. So who will lead that?”

Long-time political activist Murray Horton also proposes an inquiry – see: Thompson & Clark just tip of spyberg. Let’s have an inquiry into whole covert world of state spying. Horton explains the significance of the latest changes in state surveillance of citizens, saying that there’s been two major changes: contracting the spying out (perhaps deliberately in order to escape rules), and expanding the targets beyond just activists.

Other activists – especially those affected by the state spying – put forward proposals for reform in Jessie Chiang’s article, Environmental groups call for change after security firm revelations. For example, Russel Norman calls for prosecutions of those involved, and for the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment to be broken up. And Kevin Hague from Forest and Bird says: “I’m encouraging state services to go back to [learning] how to operate as a state service… and your obligations to the public and not just to the government of the day”.

For more thorough reform suggestions, also see blogger No Right Turn’s A private Stasi. He says “Businesses like Thompson and Clark, whose service is explicitly anti-democratic, need to be made illegal and put out of business.”

Finally, there’s the issue of the breaches of rules by Crown Law when working for the Ministry of Social Development – which Andrea Vance has described as “one of the most shocking findings”. The chief executive of MSD at the time was Peter Hughes, who of course is now chief executive of the State Services Commission, and therefore in charge of the whole of the public service. There will therefore be suspicions of conflicts of interest in terms of resolving that issue, and Hughes has handed the ongoing task to his own deputy at the SSC. For the best discussion of all this, see Aaron Smale’s Hypocrisy at the highest levels.

By Kharishar Kahfi in Jakarta

The Jakarta Corruption Court judges today sentenced former House of Representatives Speaker Setya Novanto to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of graft.

Reading out the court’s verdict, presiding judge Yanto said the former Golkar Party chairman had been declared guilty of rigging the Rp 5.9 trillion (US$424 million) e-ID project, which reportedly caused Rp 2.3 trillion in state losses.

The court also ordered him to pay Rp 500 million in fines and restitution amounting to the US$7.3 million he obtained in the case.

READ MORE: Is the e-ID mega-scandal the end for slick House Speaker Setya?

Both Setya and prosecutors said they would wait a week before announcing whether they would file an appeal.

Prosecutors had previously demanded a 16-year prison sentence and a Rp 1 billion fine for the defendant for his role in the case, which reportedly caused Rp 2.3 trillion in state losses.

-Partners-

The antigraft body also rejected Setya’s request for justice collaborator status, as the commission argued that Setya had not provided significant information related to the case.

Prosecutors indicted Setya in the case when he was still Golkar’s faction leader at the House.

Setya becomes the fourth defendant to be found guilty in the case after former Home Ministry senior officials Irman and Sugiharto as well as businessman Andi Agustinus or Andi Narogong.

Kharishar Kahfi is a Jakarta Post journalist.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz