Forgotten Dairies
Prosecuted by Assumption: The Scandal of Subjective State Loss Calculations -By Fransiscus Nanga Roka
A respectful justice system should weigh in on actual harm to the public as opposed to state-created injury. It must accept that experts can disagree, valuation is arguable and accounting language does not turn the state into a holy cow. They argued that, the more politicised a case is likely to be, the greater need there should be for methodological humility not institutional arrogance.
Numbers wear the mask of truth in corruption trials. After an audit declares a figure is a “state loss,” the number rapidly solidifies as legal fact, political fodder and moral censure. But what if that number is not an objective finding, but an institutional assumption carefully dressed up as certainty?
This is where the risk of anti-corruption enforcement straying into bureaucratic violence territory comes in. The methods for calculating state loss are often based on internal audits, one-sided methodologies or conjectural estimates that the defendant must then disprove. The burden quietly shifts. Gone is the state needing to prove loss with gilt-edged impartiality: instead, you find yourself cornered by a courtroom where assumption comes adorned as proof.
That is not just a technical issue. The legal philosophy scandal.
The thing is, when a criminal justice system knocks over contested calculation that should be treated as an open fact. The state loss is not a magical number coming down from heaven. It is an outcome generated by particular methods, assumptions and standards for comparison or judging. If those foundations are flimsy, selective or sheltered from opposition you will not obtain a truth table. This is the math of power.
The danger is obvious. When financial harm can be a matter defined solely by one agency, of one internal auditor or through an official narrative but without ample independent check on those definitions the courtroom becomes less about testing evidence and more like what you are alluding to. It turns into a practice of affirmation. The defendant is prosecuted not for the established criminal wrong, but by a state-certified estimate that carries all sorts of interpretation, exaggeration and methodological bias.
This is how legal systems create certainty where uncertainty should remain.
Corruption is especially problematic in cases of procurement, licensing, public-private contracts and policy discretion or unearned state revenue. In these instances, “loss” is rarely self-evident. It could rely upon hypothetical market amounts, projected increases, backward looking comparisons or assumptions of what the condition ought to have obtained under perfect scenarios. These are not simple facts. They are contestable constructions. However, when they make their way into the prosecutorial file, all too frequently they are treated as bulletproof.
This ought to frighten the hell out of anyone who still believes in due process.
More than procedural ceremony, a fair trial does. It requires epistemic honesty. That means, if the state is going to put a person in prison on financial harm then that damage must be demonstrated clearly and through reproducible & contestable techniques. Anything less invites abuse. Anything less is to turn the audit into an instrument of dominion, rather than a tool for accountability.
The term state loss can easily be used to intimidate. Accurate, ethical and rather patriotic sounding. Who would dare say no to losing money for the public? Which is why the rhetorical force of that statement must be approached with incredible discipline. If not, the law creates a perfect storm: your institution computes; prosecutors accept; judges defer; and defendants flounder below number that they could never really hope to erase.
This is not anti-corruption. It is anti-defense.
A respectful justice system should weigh in on actual harm to the public as opposed to state-created injury. It must accept that experts can disagree, valuation is arguable and accounting language does not turn the state into a holy cow. They argued that, the more politicised a case is likely to be, the greater need there should be for methodological humility not institutional arrogance.
It punishes defendants, but even more it burdens courts with subjective state loss calculations. They make a doctrine of presumption damage normality, and elevate accusation as an accounting venture while burying uncertainty in official documents. This is a perilous road for any democracy to take. When assumptions can lead people to prison, numbers no longer serve justice; they begin replacing it.
Moral slogans and forensic theatrics do not sustain the rule of law. It survives on proof. And with the substitution of proof for assumption comes not accountability but a sanctioned disregard.
Fransiscus Nanga Roka
Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya Indonesia
