Muhammad Nazaruddin was detained in Cartagena city after an international manhunt, Indonesian police said.

The 32-year-old had been using a false name, officials said.

He is accused of accepting bribes worth almost $3m (£1.8m) in connection with tenders for the South East Asian games, to be hosted by Indonesia this year.

Mr Nazaruddin has always denied the corruption allegations.

Since fleeing the country, he has made corruption allegations against several high-ranking officials of the Democratic Party, which is the biggest party in the governing coalition.

Mr Nazaruddin was detained on Sunday by Interpol officers as he attempted to leave the country under a false passport, reports said.

He was later flown to the Colombian capital, Bogota.

Indonesian police say they are now working with the Colombian authorities to bring Mr Nazaruddin home.

The suspect had been on the run since May, when he fled Indonesia for Singapore a day before he was due to receive a travel ban.

Mr Nazaruddin had already been dismissed by the Democratic Party, and Indonesia's anti-corruption agency had announced that it would be questioning him about the corruption allegations.

Three others have been arrested over the scandal.

The BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta says his quick departure has raised questions about why it was so easy for him to leave, given the gravity of the allegations against him.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who leads the Democrats, has always tried to project an image of himself as the "Mr Clean" of Indonesian politics - one of the reasons Indonesians voted him in for a second term in 2009.

But this sort of corruption scandal suggests that he still has a lot to do to prove he can change his country's culture of impunity, our correspondent adds.