Court to receive files on corrupt judges this month
JAKARTA (JP): The government-appointed Joint Team to Eradicate Corruption is once again to bring charges against corrupt judges, this time through the offices of public prosecutors.
Head of the team Adi Andojo Sutjipto said that the team would start submitting the dossiers on bribery cases involving delinquent judges to the district courts concerned later this month.
"Our team consists of, among others, prosecutors and police officers. The prosecutors will submit the dossiers in the name of the prosecutor's office concerned," he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday by telephone.
Late last year, the South Jakarta District Court ruled that the team had no authority to prosecute such cases on the grounds that, according to the court, only the police and prosecutors had the right to do so. The ruling was issued after a lawsuit had been filed by Supreme Court justices Supraptini Sutarto and Marnis Kahar, who were named suspects by the anticorruption team in a Rp 196 million (US$22,500) bribery case.
Andojo, a former judge, said that the investigations conducted by his team had also revealed a number of corruption cases involving judges of the lower courts, based not only in Jakarta, but also in some other big cities including Surabaya.
"Some cases involved billions of rupiah," he said.
The antigraft team was set up by Attorney General Marzuki Darusman and launched by President Abdurrahman Wahid in April, 2000. The team has prioritized the eradication of corruption in the judicial system.
Andojo said that the efforts to combat corruption had been hampered by the delinquent judges, whose verdicts often sparked controversy.
He expressed his enthusiasm over the move by the new Minister of Justice and Human Rights Baharuddin Lopa, who issued a statement on Feb. 12, underlining that all judges and employees of his ministry must not take bribes.
He said that the team would cooperate with Lopa, who was his "old friend", to seek clean judges to handle corruption cases.
Meanwhile, South Jakarta District Court spokesman Soedarto said that the judges welcomed the warning but he was skeptical about its impact.
"We understand that judges may not deal with lawyers outside the court, but who can control that?" he asked.
He said that the judges in handing down their verdicts were accountable to God, not to the ministry or the Supreme Court.
"So, everything depends of each judge's personality and moral integrity," he said, adding that the minister's call should also be addressed to lawyers.
He said that a verdict depended on a judge's intuition, and that there was no fixed standard for imposing punishments on defendants.
The South Jakarta District Court chief, Lalu Mariyun, however, declined to comment on Lopa's statement.
"I wouldn't dare comment on the minister's move," he said.
Mariyun was the presiding judge who refused to try former president Soeharto on corruption charges, saying that he was too sick to stand trial.
Even though Feb. 12's statement does not carry any legal sanctions against those who fail to comply with it, some praised Lopa's action as a start in the process of eradicating corrupt practices.
Coordinator of the Indonesia Legal Aid Institute and Human Right Association (PBHI) Hendardi said that he believed the statement would likely scare the judges or other people in the ministry who abused their powers.
He underlined, however, that Lopa has to impose strict sanctions on the judges who are found to be guilty of abusing their authority, otherwise his warning statement would not be effective.
The new minister should investigate every controversial ruling made by the courts, such as those exonerating defendants Djoko Sugiarto Tjandra and Pande N. Lubis in the Bank Bali scandal and the light sentence imposed on Mohamad Bob Hasan by the Central Jakarta District Court, Hendardi said. (01/sim)