INDONESIA parliament’s speaker, implicated in a US$170 million (RM707 million) corruption case, was in hospital today after a bizarre drama in which he claimed to have been injured in a car crash shortly after a failed raid on his palatial estate.

The story has dominated headlines and news broadcasts this week in the graft-riddled Southeast Asian nation, where images showed a grim-faced Setya Novanto laying in a Jakarta hospital bed with medical tubes in his nose.

Critics lashed out at Novanto, accusing him of trying to dodge anti-corruption officials who want to question him in one of Indonesia’s worst graft scandals.

“These kinds of actions will make people question everything – how can a leader have such little dignity?” said Jusuf Kalla, the country’s vice president and a member of Golkar, Indonesia’s second-biggest political party, which is headed by Novanto.

“Leaders have to obey the law and be trusted by people. If they run away like this, how can they be trusted?”

On Wednesday night, officials from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) raided Novanto’s multimillion-dollar estate in a ritzy part of the capital, known for its extreme gap between rich and poor.

But Novanto was nowhere to be found, sparking a frantic city-wide search amid fears he had left the country.

The 62-year-old politician was put on Indonesia’s most-wanted list before he reappeared in hospital Thursday following what he claimed was a car crash, though he showed no sign of serious injuries.

Authorities want to question him over allegations he and other politicians siphoned millions of dollars in public funds linked to a state project that issued new ID cards to Indonesia’s 255 million residents.

The allegations earlier this year caused widespread shock even by the standards of one of the world’s most corrupt countries.

Novanto’s lawyer insisted today his client was not trying to dodge questions, saying he was “very, very weak” and feared he would be treated unfairly by the powerful anti-corruption body.

“He doesn’t want to be persecuted,” Fredrich Yunadi told AFP. “He has a right to be treated according to the law.”

Novanto has faced corruption allegations before, including a case in which he was recorded trying to extort money from the local unit of Freeport-McMoRan in exchange for extending the US-based miner’s right to operate in the country. He has never been prosecuted.

Two years ago, Novanto appeared at a news conference at Donald Trump’s eponymous Manhattan skyscraper, where the now US president described him as an “amazing man” who would do “great things for the United States”. – AFP, November 17, 2017.