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According to a source, the National Police are reeling from another setback after it emerged that fugitive tax man Gayus Tambunan’s wife, who is wanted for questioning in connection with the Rp 25 billion ($2.75 million) corruption scandal involving her husband, may have fled the country with him last week.

A police source told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday that investigators believe Milana Anggraeni flew from Jakarta to Singapore on Wednesday with Gayus, two days before he was declared a suspect for obstruction of justice. Gayus, a previously unknown 30-year-old tax official, was found by police to have Rp 25 billion in two bank accounts last year.

“We were supposed to summon Milana Anggraeni as a witness related to documents we had from the Financial Transactions Reports and Analysis Center [PPATK] that she also received money from Gayus,” the source said. “However, when we came to her luxury private house in Kelapa Gading, East Jakarta, on Friday, we failed to find her. We suspect that she left the country with her husband.”

The Globe was unable to contact Milana on Sunday to confirm that she had left the country. Last week, Gayus said in a phone interview with an Indonesian television station that he was in Singapore.

In the wake of their red-faced admission that Gayus was safely in Singapore, which has no extradition treaty with Indonesia, the National Police’s top brass took the economic crimes directorate off the case.

Comr. Gen. Heru Winarko, deputy chief of the force’s anticorruption directorate, said on Saturday that his officers were now heading the investigation.

The police source said investigators believe other relatives of Gayus may also have received money from him — possibly to conceal it — and that while police had managed to summon a younger brother of Milana for questioning, they were unable to contact her.

“There were several transfers of Rp 3.6 billion to Milana’s accounts between December 4 [2009] and January 11,” the source said. “We have to make it clear because we suspect that this money is also part of the crime.”

Gayus’s case gained national attention after Comr. Gen. Susno Duadji, the renegade former National Police chief detective, publicly claimed that the tax official bribed senior police officials to stop investigating his case.

The National Police declared Susno a suspect for defamation for implicating two high-level officals on the force last week before making a U-turn on Friday.

Police say only Rp 395 million of the funds in Gayus’s accounts was found to be illegal, which they reported to prosecutors. Gayus was then charged with money laundering, corruption and embezzlement. After transferring the case dossier, police unfroze Gayus’s accounts in PT Panin Bank and PT Bank Central Asia, which still held Rp 24.5 billion in funds.

On March 12, however, the Tangerang District Court acquitted Gayus of all charges.

Police said they had accepted earlier statements by Gayus that the Rp 24.5 billion in funds belonged to a Batam businessman named Andi Kosasih, who also testified the money was his and had been transferred to Gayus for property purchases.

Heru confirmed on Saturday that Andi had been arrested and he and Gayus could be charged with giving false testimony, corruption and money laundering.

“We will not giving him any privileges [while in detention],” he said of Andi. “We want to rebuild public trust and it can be used as momentum not only for the police but also for other law-enforcement agencies.”

National Police Chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri has acknowledged that something “strange” occurred during the investigation into Gayus last year because he was never arrested, and the dossier of another suspect in the case, believed to be fellow tax official Robertus Santonius, was never transferred to prosecutors.