Former BPN chief jailed for bribery

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

The Tangerang District Court cleared the former Tangerang municipal land agency chief of corruption charges on Monday but sentenced him to eight months in prison for receiving a bribe.

A panel of judges led by Zainal Arifin and including Ade Komarudin and Sri Hardini ruled that Satmojo SW was guilty of violating Article 419 of the Criminal Code on bribery.

The court found that he received 1,050 square meters of land from a subdistrict official in compensation for issuing 2,281 land documents.

The sentence handed down by the court was far more lenient than the sentencing demand of prosecutor Hasran Harahap. He had asked the court to sentence Satmojo to five years in jail for violating Article 1 of Law No. 3/1971 on corruption, which carries a maximum punishment of life in prison.

Between 1998 and 2000, the defendant signed and handed out land documents to 2,281 residents in four subdistricts in Tangerang municipality, charging them between Rp 700,000 and Rp 1 million, according to the prosecutor.

The official fee for the service is Rp 283,000, as stipulated in Ministry of Agriculture Decree No. 4/1995 on land certificates.

The prosecutor accused the defendant of collecting Rp 1.6 billion from the residents, of which he gave Rp 45 million to the state and shared the rest with three members of his staff -- Dudung Abdullah, Dedy Cahyadi and Santoso -- who are still at large.

The judges, however, had a different view.

"The defendant had no knowledge that his staff members were collecting between Rp 700,000 and Rp 1 million from the residents to arrange these documents, but he admitted that he received a plot of land from a Sukasari subdistrict official identified as Subhan for signing the documents," said Zainal.

Both the prosecutor and the defendant's lawyer, Durapati Sinulingga, said they were considering appealing the verdict.

The defendant was arrested in 2001. He was in detention for eight months but has been under house arrest since his trial began last year.