Judge admits he was paid
Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A judge being tried in a bribery case linked to Supreme Court justices admitted on Wednesday to receiving Rp 550 million from a company, but claimed that he did not keep the money.
Faozatulo Zendrato, 51, now a Jakarta High Court judge, said he only attempted to help state-owned PT Surabaya Industrial Estate Rungkut (PT SIER), which appealed two land dispute cases to the Supreme Court.
"I was only acting as a middleman, I didn't even get a penny," he told a hearing at the Central Jakarta District Court, presided over by Judge Bambang Sriwulan.
Fauzotulo was head of the appeal division of the Supreme Court when he received the money in 1999.
The defendant said PT SIER had transferred Rp 550 million to his account at Bank Rakyat Indonesia on Jl. Veteran, Central Jakarta. Despite suspicion that Fauzotulo used the funds to directly bribe the justices, however, he later claimed to have withdrawn the money and given it to the late Soedarto, PT SIER's lawyer at the time.
When Judge Bambang asked Faozatulo whether the money affected the Supreme Court verdict, he replied, "Yes, I think it worked as Soedarto said "beres" (done), and PT SIER later won the cases."
Even though the defendant admitted that he acted as a middleman between PT SIER and the Supreme Court justices, neither the judges nor prosecutors asked him how the justices were approached.
After the trial, prosecutor Agus Sutoto, who is scheduled to request sentencing on Dec. 5, said that he did not ask the defendant about the involvement of the justices, implying that it was not relevant to the aims of the trial.
"The important thing is that he admitted his involvement. We didn't ask about the justices' involvement because it was beyond the scope of the indictment," Agus remarked.
The prosecutor failed to summon three Supreme Court justices and two former Supreme Court justices who presided over the PT SIER cases. The Supreme Court justices are Marnis Kahar, R.L. Tobing and Soedarno, while the former justices are M. Yahya Harahap and R. Sunu Wahadi.
Marnis Kahar and M. Yahya Harahap have been tried for alleged involvement in a different bribery case but both were acquitted.