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National Police Chief Gen. Bambang Hendarso Danuri said on Friday that he had begun investigations over transcripts of wiretapped phone conversations allegedly pointing to a plot designed to frame two deputies of the Corruption Eradication Commission.

“I need to find out who is behind the wiretapped phone conversations, whether they were conducted according to the law and the reason behind the wiretapping,” Bambang said during a nearly two-hour news conference shortly after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono instructed him to launch a probe to find out the identity of the wiretapper.

“We did not panic over the taped conversations. We have never panicked in handling this case. We will seize the transcripts as evidence once we receive a court permit.”

But he said results from the investigations would remain closed to the public until they reached the courts, and also denied accusations by the commissioners’ lawyers that the case was fabricated by the police to muzzle the antigraft agency, also known as the KPK.

Bibit Samad Rianto and Chandra M Hamzah are accused of abuse of power for allegedly lifting a travel ban on graft fugitive Anggoro Widjojo so that he could escape to Singapore. They were arrested on Thursday.

Bambang said the case stems from the testimony of now dismissed KPK chief Antasari Azhar — currently facing murder charges — on July 16 alleging that Anggoro had told him he had paid Rp 6.7 billion ($703,000) in bribes to the KPK commissioners in August or September to halt the investigation against him.

“Chandra issued a travel ban against Anggoro. We found it suspicious that even though a travel ban had been issued, the KPK had stopped investigating Anggoro for nine months,” Bambang said, adding that Bibit had also issued a travel ban against another graft fugitive, Djoko Tjandra, only to lift it shortly afterward.

Police have gathered testimonies from 22 witnesses and have seized documents, letters, phone records, text messages and parking tickets as evidence, he said.

Bambang said that when police discussed the case with prosecutors, they asked the police to add bribery charges to the list.

“While this is difficult to prove, there is a witness who claims to have paid money,” he said, referring to Anggoro’s brother, Anggodo. He also said there was a witness claiming to have received the money. He did not name anyone, but was clearly referring to supposed middleman Ary Muladi, who allegedly took the money from Anggoro and paid it to Chandra and Bibit.

But Ary later retracted his testimony, saying the payment claim had been fabricated under Anggodo’s instructions. Antasari had already said he was unsure that his former deputies had taken money from Anggoro and that he had been forced by police to change his testimony to support the charges.

Bambang did not respond when asked if police had solid proof of the bribery allegations, particularly after Ary had retracted his confession, and he made no comment when asked why the National Police’s chief of detectives, Comr. Gen. Susno Duadji, was not present at Friday’s news conference. Susno had initiated the probe against the two and had allegedly flown to Singapore in July to meet with Anggoro, with media speculating that the visit was designed to collect evidence to implicate Chandra and Bibit.

The deputies were named suspects on Sept. 15 for what police said was abuse of power in inconsistently imposing a travel ban on Anggoro, for another graft case, while lifting the ban from wanted graft convict Djoko.

Meanwhile, the AGO said on Friday that it would announce next week whether or not the case against Chandra and Bibit would go to trial.