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The National Police are investigating suspicious financial transactions involving 29 officials who had worked alongside graft convict Gayus Tambunan at the tax office, a police spokesman said on Wednesday.

“We have asked the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center [PPATK] to provide transaction reports on the 29 tax officers, who handled cases for 19 companies,” Insp. Gen. Anton Bahrul Alam said.

“We have also asked for transaction reports on the 19 companies,” he added, while declining to name the companies that would be investigated.

“These 19 companies were among 151 that were handled by Gayus. We are focusing on these 19 companies because their appeals to the tax tribunal were accepted. We’re suspicious that something was not right.”

Anton said detectives were also coordinating with tax experts from the University of Indonesia and investigators from the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and State Development Finance Comptroller (BPKP) as part of the inquiry.

“We need their help since this meets with what the president had ordered — a thorough investigation into the case of graft suspect Gayus Tambunan,” he said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono called on law enforcement agencies in January to look into companies implicated in the Gayus scandal.

These included miners Kaltim Prima Coal, Arutmin and Bumi Resources, all of which are part of the Bakrie Group, owned by the family of Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie.

Senior tax official Maruli Pandapotan Manurung, Gayus’s former supervisor, was suspended as head of the tax appeals division in June by then tax chief Mochamad Tjiptardjo because of his suspected involvement in the case.

Maruli was jailed for two and a half years in February for conspiring to commit graft. Tjiptardjo was removed from his post in January.

Gayus himself was sentenced in January to seven years in jail for bribing a judge and law enforcers in order to secure an acquittal in a previous trial.

He first came to the attention of the police after it was discovered he had amassed Rp 28 billion ($3.2 million) in his bank accounts, money believed to have come from corporate tax dodgers using him to defraud the government.

Police said previously that Gayus had dealt with as many as 151 companies’ tax cases.

Gayus reportedly told investigators that part of his wealth had come from Bakrie Group companies, though he later backtracked on that claim.