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)