Indonesians flooded social media to urge Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati to take stronger steps to root out corruption at the tax office.

It started from a tax officer’s son who was arrested for violently beating up a teenager. The case led people to find his social media posts where he showed off his family’s wealth, with videos of him running loops on a Harley-Davidson motorbike and cruising in a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. That raised questions of how the tax officer could afford such assets on a civil servant’s wage.

In Indonesia, a Rubicon can sell for up to 1.3bil rupiah (US$85,000), while an official of a similar rank could earn up to 52mil rupiah (US$3,400) a month in salary and allowance.

The officer has since resigned and been summoned by the Corruption Eradication Agency. Now the attention has turned to Indrawati, who has long championed the importance of public trust in ramping up tax compliance. On Twitter, the hashtag #SriMulyaniOMDO or ”Sri Mulyani all talk” is trending as Indonesians called for more action.

The minister has strongly condemned the scandal, even taking time between her meetings with finance ministers of the world’s largest economies in Bengaluru to remove the tax officer from his post. He then resigned as civil servant.

The scandal risks eroding confidence in the ministry, especially as the deadline nears for individuals to report their taxes by the end of March, even among the officials themselves.

On Monday, Indrawati spoke with tax officers to improve their morale. “I can feel your disappointment, this is why I say, what doesn’t kill us will surely make us stronger,” she said to the employees in an Instagram post. “We have to keep building public trust and sternly cleanse the institution of those who soil and betray our integrity.”

 - Bloomberg