BALIKPAPAN: Police in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, are expanding their investigation into the alleged misuse of up to Rp 124 billion ($12.7 million) in provincial social aid funds granted on questionable grounds in 2011, Jakarta Globe reported.
Comr. Feby Hutagalung, the city police’s chief of detectives, said on Thursday that his office was looking into all the organizations that received grants from the 2011 provincial budget, as well as awaiting an audit to determine whether there were any losses as a result of the policy.
The case came to light at the end of last month when the police named some of the grant recipients as suspects for allegedly falsifying their grant proposals.
They include the head of a playgroup who received Rp 400 million despite only having four children in his care, as well as the chairman and the secretary of a mushroom growers’ association, which received Rp 200 million.
Feby said that in both cases, the suspects had filed fraudulent applications for grants in order to get as much money as possible from the provincial budget.
“You could say their grant proposals were false. None of these three individuals can properly account for the money they received,” he said.
“We haven’t had a chance yet to look at the other recipients, but we’re getting around to it. It’s going to take some time, though, because there were 129 organizations, foundations and business associations that received provincial funding, all of them in Samarinda.”
Separately, Syafrian Hasani, the head of the East Kalimantan Social Affairs Office, which was responsible for selecting the grant recipients, denied that his office had conspired with the latter on the amount of funding approved.
However, he acknowledged that his office may have been less than diligent in vetting each application, but said this was because of the sheer volume of applications.
“We tried to approved funding for all those who deserved it, but we were overwhelmed by the number of grant proposals that we received,” he said.
Syafrian added that in all, his office approved Rp 814 billion in grants for 2,054 recipients throughout East Kalimantan in 2011. He said that to date, only around 600 had filed accountability reports.