Defendants admit to plagiarism role
Defendants admit to plagiarism role
JAKARTA (JP): The businessman being tried for plagiarizing a hydraulic analysis admitted in court yesterday that his office spent Rp 800 million to get the falsified analysis report.
Aswin Osantara, director of PT Kharisma Wira Perkasa, told the Central Jakarta District Court that money was spent to copy the original hydraulic analysis for their coastline reclamation project and to pay the consultants to legalize the (copied) analysis.
The consultants, Ahmadi Sulaeman, Bambang Widiarno and Zaenal Amin, who live in South Jakarta, are also being tried for their roles separately at the South Jakarta District Court.
Aswin was tried together with his assistants, Hadi Rianto and Sigit Siswanto, who is North Jakarta city planning employee. Aswin's company is located in Central Jakarta.
Aswin told the court yesterday that Sigit took the original hydraulic analysis from the city office upon his orders.
The original hydraulic analysis was made by PT Sac Nusantara, who submitted it to the city administration as part of its reclamation proposal for the North Jakarta coastline.
Aswin said it was Achdiat Fakih and Ade Abednego, his employees, who copied the original hydraulic analysis stolen by Sigit for him. Achdiat and Ade are being tried in a separate court on similar charges.
PT Kharisma Wira Perkasa then included the copied hydraulic analysis in its project proposal to reclaim the same northern coastline of Jakarta.
The second defendant, Hadi Rianto, said that he signed a letter sent by PT Kharisma Wira Perkasa to the Bandung-based Center of Water Research and Development. The letter was brought by Achdiat to the Center to have the hydraulic analysis legalized.
"I signed the letter upon Aswin's orders," Hadi said.
He also said that he gave Rp 6 million to Achdiat to arrange the legalization.
Sigit Siswanto admitted to stealing the hydraulic analysis from the city office's files. He and Aswin went to the city office to submit the project proposal with the copied hydraulic analysis, which was also ordered by Aswin.
But Aswin denied being the mastermind, saying, "I asked Ade and Achdiyat to obtain the hydraulic analysis legally, but they gave the fake one." The prosecutor said that Aswin asked Sigit to steal the hydraulic analysis and asked Ade and Achdiyat to copy it for him.
The trial was adjourned until Thursday. (29)