Justice Adi was wrong: Soerjono

JAKARTA (JP): A special team investigating allegations that members of the Supreme Court accepted bribes to acquit the Gandhi Memorial School principal found no evidence to support the claim, Chief Justice Soerjono announced yesterday.

The team however found a "violation of procedure" in the way that the Gandhi Seva Loka vs Ram Gulumal alias V. Ram case was parceled out to the panel of justices in the Supreme Court.

Chief Justice Soerjono announced the result of the investigation after briefing President Soeharto at Merdeka Palace yesterday. He was accompanied by Sarwata, the justice who headed the team investigating the latest and most damaging allegation of corruption against the country's court system.

The team was formed after the allegation of collusion was made by deputy chief justice Adi Andojo Soetjipto in April. Its finding, based on oral and written interviews with 34 people, was presented in a 1,561-page report.

Justice Adi went public with the allegation after his request in December that the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office look into the matter was ignored. Since then, he has been rebuked by the chief justice and ordered to keep silent pending the result of the investigation. He also momentarily lost his power to parcel out cases, a task that comes with his position in the Supreme Court.

The court case pitted defendant Ram, founder and principal of the Gandhi Memorial School, and the Indian community in Jakarta grouped in the Gandhi Seva Loka, previously the Bombay Merchant Association.

Soerjono said the two parties were disputing over the management of the school, which has become a big money spinner with an annual turnover of billions of rupiah.

The Supreme Court in July last year acquitted Ram Gulumal of all charges of embezzlement of the school's funds, reversing verdicts of guilty by the Central Jakarta District Court and the Jakarta High Court. The district court handed Ram a one-year jail term, while the high court cut the sentence to eight months.

Not happy with the ruling, members of the Gandhi Seva Loka turned to Justice Adi in July asking him to look into what they believed to be collusion between the defendant and the panel of judges who heard the case.

The allegation of collusion centered on the Court's Director of Criminal Affairs Sujatmi Sudarmoko, and Justice Samsoedin Aboebakar. It was Sujatmi who directed that the case be heard by Justice Samsoedin.

Although the final decision in parceling out the case was made by Justice Adi as deputy chief for criminal affairs, he said it was much later that he suspected that the Gandhi Memorial School case should not have been heard by Samsoedin's panel.

In his letter to the Prosecutor's Office in December, Adi said Rp 1.4 billion (US$600,000) may have changed hands in the process that led to the Court's ruling to acquit Ram of all charges.

That allegation was based on a letter which Adi received at his home, Soerjono said yesterday, citing the report of the investigating team. "But without attempting to check the accuracy of this information, he (Adi) treated it as fact," he said.

The letter, according to the team's report, suggested that Ram was "offering Rp 1.4 billion to settle the case at the Supreme Court".

The report said none of the people it asked, including Adi Andojo, knew if any money actually changed hands. Some people said they only heard about money being mentioned, it said.

Ram also denied ever offering or giving money to anyone in connection with the case, whether in the district court, the high court or the Supreme Court, the report said.

"The question of money in relation to the collusion issue is not clear. And there were conflicting reports about the exact sum involved, who it came from, and who it was given to," it said.

The report said there was a "violation of procedure" in the way the panel of justices led by Samsoedin was appointed to hear the case but this "did not amount to collusion".

The report refrained from looking into the specifics of the court case, which it pointed out has already been settled with the acquittal of the defendant.

Chief Justice Soerjono declined to comment on what further action he would take and whether or not Justice Adi had been wrong in making the issue public in the first place.

"We'll study first before we take any action we deem necessary," he said. (emb)