Bustanil's trial some time away: AGO

Abdul Khalik, Jakarta

The Attorney General's Office (AGO) announced that it had no immediate plans to submit the corruption case of former State Logistics Agency (Bulog) chairman Bustanil Arifin to the district court for trial despite the fact that his case file had been completed two years ago.

The office spokesman Kemas Yahya Rahman said Monday that his office did not know when they would forward the files to the court as prosecutors were still looking for evidence.

"We are still examining the case file. I don't know when we can submit it to court. I think we must find some more evidence to complete the case file," said Kemas.

Kemas's statement, however, contradicted a statement issued by the head of the South Jakarta prosecutor's office Himawan Kaskawa that the case file was already completed and ready for trial.

Bustanil, who is also the former state minister for cooperatives and small and medium enterprises, had been declared a suspect in a case involving an inordinate price mark-up for land purchase in 1990 by his ministry.

At that time, Bulog disbursed Rp 10 million, which was approved by Bustanil, for the ministry to buy a plot of land in Kuningan, South Jakarta with a market price of Rp 1.8 billion. The land belonged to the second eldest son of former president Soeharto, Bambang Trihatmodjo.

The graft case was initially investigated by the Jakarta prosecutor's office before the Attorney General's Office took it over in 2002.

Himawan denied allegations that his office had stopped investigating the case, saying that he would wait for the green light from the AGO to hand the case over to the courts.

"After we received the case file from the police, we announced that the case file was complete. We have to expose the case to the AGO. It is now up to them," said Himawan.

The AGO has to submit the case file to the district court for trial.

Police submitted the case file to the prosecutor's office in June 2002. The Jakarta prosecutor's office announced subsequently that the file had been completed and was ready for trial.

Legal expert Luhut M. Pangaribuan questioned how a completed case file could get bogged down in the prosecutor's office for two years without any transparent efforts to bring the case to court.

"Usually, a case file will only stay at the prosecutor's office for around two weeks before being forwarded to the court. If there is no announcement that the AGO had stopped the case, then we can say they neglected their duty," said Luhut.

He further argued that if they were not negligent then obviously, something was wrong with the AGO.

"The public may think that people at the AGO have taken bribes from Bustanil to delay the legal process. They must give us a logical explanation over this delay," said Luhut.

He called on the AGO to quickly submit the case to court to prevent further public speculation.