Hotman Paris says Prabowo contacted him at 8pm to learn about the Nadiem case

Lawyer Hotman Paris says he received a late-night call from President Prabowo Subianto on Tuesday (May 19) asking for his views on the Chromebook corruption case involving former Education and Culture and Research and Technology Minister Nadiem Makarim.

‘Tepat jam 8 malam pada saat saya sudah mau tidur, tiba-tiba telepon saya berdering dari ajudan Presiden dan saya disambungkan dengan Bapak Presiden Prabowo,’ Hotman said in a video posted on his Instagram account.

In the conversation, Hotman said Prabowo genuinely wants the Chromebook procurement corruption case to be judged fairly. As such, he said, the president asked him about the case.

Hotman, who had previously acted as Nadiem’s lawyer, said he had conveyed his views to the President. Including, he said, his assessment of the evidence and the material.

‘However, on social media I cannot reveal what I told the President. That is my secret,’ he said.

Hotman only offered clues or hints. One of them, he claimed, was that he told the president that Nadiem’s subordinate, Ibrahim Arief alias Ibam, had already been convicted with a four-year prison term in that case.

Therefore, Hotman believes the Judges Panel will issue a verdict in line with the Ibam case with Nadiem as Ibam’s boss.

‘So I said, the most likely scenario is that the judges will be consistent with their decision as against Ibam,’ he said.

‘Because if an assistant has already been convicted, then the assistant was convicted for helping whom? Helping his boss? You know the answer,’ he added.

Earlier, the Attorney General’s Office (JPU) of the Supreme Court demanded the Jakarta Corruption Court panel convict Nadiem Anwar Makarim of 18 years’ imprisonment and a Rp1 billion fine, subsiding 190 days in prison.

Prosecutors also demanded Nadiem pay restitution totalling Rp809,597,125,000 (Rp809.5 billion) and Rp4,871,469,603,758 (Rp4.8 trillion) — assets alleged to be disproportionate to the defendant’s lawful income or suspected to derive from corruption.

If the restitution is not paid, it will be substituted with a nine-year prison term.

Prosecutors stated that former Minister of Education and Culture under President Joko Widodo had been shown to have harmed state finances in the Chromebook and CDM procurements for the 2020-2022 budget year.

(tfq/wis)