Fuad and Siswono to be queried over graft case

Fuad and Siswono to be queried over graft case

JAKARTA (JP): Attorney General Marzuki Darusman confirmed on
Friday that two legislators of the People's Consultative Assembly
(MPR) will be summoned as witnesses in corruption cases involving
former president Soeharto.

Marzuki said the summons for former finance minister Fuad
Bawazier and former minister of public housing Siswono Yudohusodo
would be sent sometime next week.

The two former ministers under Soeharto had been widely tipped
to be the anonymous persons who, according to President
Abdurrahman Wahid in the closing of a pro-democracy forum in Bali
last week, were to be arrested for allegedly fomenting unrest in
troubled provinces.

However, Marzuki denied such speculation, saying that his
office merely checked a list of 115 names allegedly associated
with corruption with the secretary general of the House of
Representatives (DPR) in December to determine whether state
officials were among them.

"Every measure taken against state officials, including
questioning, needs a special permit from the President. We have
once mistakenly put a state official under investigation without
the president's permission," he said, without elaborating.

Earlier at the House, Marzuki denied that the summons was
linked to the current unrest.

"Such news has raised misperceptions of the lack of integrity
of a judiciary body, by planting in the public's mind an idea
that there is a mixing of legal institutions and politics ...
while there is none," he added.(bby/jun/byg)