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Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Indonesia's vice president defended the embattled attorney general Friday as critics clamoured for his resignation over an embarrassing corruption scandal involving top prosecutors.

The bribery allegations against the attorney general's office, backed by a series of secretly taped conversations played at the ongoing corruption trial of a businesswoman, have dominated the country's headlines for weeks.

But Vice President Jusuf Kalla stood by Attorney General Hendarman Supandji despite pressure on the government to polish its clean credentials ahead of elections next year.

"If a subordinate commits a crime it doesn't mean that the chief is guilty," he was quoted by AFP as telling ElShinta radio.

Kalla praised Supandji's performance and said he was the best attorney general in the country's history.

"In my experience, among all the attorney generals, he's the one with the best level of professionalism and knowledge," he said.

Supandji has denied any involvement in a suspected web of bribes and influence-peddling after one of his top investigators was arrested for allegedly taking a 660,000-dollar bribe to drop an embezzlement case.

Several top prosecutors have been implicated but so far none has been charged with any offence.

Taped conversations between prosecutors and businesswoman Artalyta Suryani, including one in which a prosecutor is heard asking for a "bonus" for his work, have been played in court and endlessly repeated on radio and television.

The case revolves around billions of dollars in emergency liquidity funds allegedly embezzled by banker Syamsul Nursalim, one of the country's richest men, during the Asian financial crisis in 1998.

Suryani is accused of bribing the prosecutor in charge of the Nursalim case, which was dropped days before she is suspected of paying him the 660,000 dollars.

The case is just one of a slew of corruption scandals which have erupted in recent weeks in Indonesia, which ranks 143rd on Transparency International's global corruption perceptions index alongside Russia, Togo and Gambia.

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