Member of Commission VII of the House of Representatives from the Prosperous Justice Party(PKS) faction, Mulyanto, asked the Corruption Eradication Commision (KPK) to immediately follow up on the findings of Supreme Audit Body (BPK) that there was a state loss of IDR 7.7 trillion due to the government’s negligence in monitoring and collecting fines from PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) for failing to meet the smelter construction target.
Mulyanto said the KPK must proactively follow up on the results of the BPK examination of mineral and coal management for the 2020-2022 period because it involves a large amount of state losses.
Mulyanto suspects that behind the negligence in monitoring and collecting PTDI fines, there are certain parties who are trying to make a profit. Because according to him, it is very unlikely that the Government is negligent in collecting large fines. For hidden tax matters only the Government can track.
“This is not a small amount of money. Therefore, the government must have prepared officers to monitor and implement the decision,” Mulyanto said in a statement on December 22,2023.
Therefore, according to Mulyanto, the BPK needs to explore by conducting an investigative examination to find out whether the state loss is reasonable and purely the Government’s negligence or there is a ‘flirtation’ between the supervisory party and PTFI that is indicated as corruption.
BPK should not stop at this point, merely stating that there is a state loss due to the delay in PTFI’s smelter construction.
However, according to Mulyanto, the BPK must go deeper by looking at the cause of the state loss. If there are indications of corruption, the BPK should not hesitate to work with the KPK to dismantle this case to its roots.
The government has been too indulgent to PTFI by granting a licence to export copper concentrate with low added value. Even though the licence clearly violates the Minerba Law. In fact, the permit was given not just once but many times.
“It looks like the government was told to violate the Minerba Law many times by PTFI. It’s really sad. Unfortunately, the fine for the delay in smelter construction was not collected,” said Mulyanto.
For information, based on the BPK report related to the management of mineral and coal mining for the period 2020 – the third quarter of 2022, it is known that there were violations of potential state revenue, one of which was because PTFI did not report the construction of a smelter until a 13-month gap.
Arifin Tasrif , Energy and Mineral Resource Minister said that the delay in the Freeport smelter construction was caused by the covid -19 pandemic . Because of the pandemic, the government and Freeport agreed to revise the S-curva that become the indicator of construction progress.
The revision of the S-Curva has created a different schedule and target of the smelter’s completion, as a result the government imposed a fine for Freeport’s smelter delay based on revised S-Curve. ” The fine is set according to actual delay that Freeport did. ” he added.
Tasrif said that the government will not impose the IDR 7.7 trillion or USD 500 million fine for Freeport because the calculation is based on the old S-curve.
