PADANG, West Sumatra — Scandals continue to plague Indonesia's penal system. In 2010, people were shocked to learn that Artalyta Suryani, a socialite and lobbyist who was serving a five-year sentence for bribing a senior prosecutor, had a spacious 64-square-meter room all to herself complete with amenities one might usually find in a five-star hotel — air conditioning, leather couch, work desk and a computer — in the Pondok Bambu Women's Penitentiary in East Jakarta.
Also in 2010, graft suspect Gayus Halomoan Tambunan, despite his high-profile case, bribed the prison warden and guards in exchange for a weekend break privilege to attended a tennis tournament in Bali.
And now in 2011, prosecutors, an attorney and a prison employee have been implicated in a convict's scheme to have someone else serve her sentence at Bojonegoro prison in East Java. The inmate-swap case emerged after a Bojonegoro inmate thought to be Kasiem, a graft convict, was discovered to be a person named Karni, who was allegedly paid 10 million rupiah ($1,100) to serve Kasiem's 3 1/2-month sentence.
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