Business tycoon Bob Hasan to face trial

JAKARTA (JP): Timber tycoon Mohamad "Bob" Hasan will face trial for corruption this month as the case dossiers will be submitted to Central Jakarta District Court next week, a prosecutor said on Thursday.

Andi Syarifuddin, assistant of special crimes investigations at the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office, said general prosecutors led by Arnold Angkouw would first study the 8,000-page dossier.

"The prosecutors will probably file the case next week," he told journalists at his office.

To ensure his presence at the trial, Hasan, a former golfing buddy of former president Soeharto, was put under 20-day state arrest on Thursday.

He is currently being detained at the Attorney General's Office compound.

"The public will blame prosecutors if we fail to present Bob to the court," Andi said.

Prosecutors on Thursday also handed the dossiers of the corruption case involving Hasan's company PT Mapindo Parama to the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office. It is alleged the company caused some US$75.62 million in losses to the state.

Accompanied by his lawyer Augustinus Hutajulu and long-time friend Andi Darussalam Tabusala, Hasan, who is currently under house arrest as a suspect in another corruption case, refused to comment on his new arrest status.

"I will yield to the instruction," he briefly said.

Augustinus, however, blasted the detention, saying that his client had been cooperative throughout the investigation.

The case centers around a $87-million government project to perform aerial mapping and airborne radar imaging of forestry resources in the country. Hasan, who was chair of the Indonesian Forest Concessionaires Association (APHI), awarded the project to PT Mapindo.

The prosecutors found that Hasan, who briefly served as minister of trade and industry, violated the contract, and that the procedures and the results of the mapping were not in accordance with the requirements of the contract.

The corruption, which is believed to have taken place between 1989 and 1999, caused an estimated $168 million in losses to APHI, prosecutors allege. (bby)