Marzuki blames predecessor for slow work

Marzuki blames predecessor for slow work

JAKARTA (JP): Attorney General Marzuki Darusman has blamed his
predecessor for his sluggish efforts in tracking down suspected
hidden assets and wealth belonging to former president Soeharto's
family and cronies.

"If the search to locate the assets had been started long ago,
we could have obtained the documents of money transferred to
their accounts overseas through the now defunct banks," he told
journalists at his office on Friday.

Marzuki, who has served as attorney general since October
1999, argued that his office encountered problems in tracing the
evidence of the existence of such assets, as the bank's documents
and information of the Soehartos wealth are now scattered in
several financial institutions.

Such lack of information, Marzuki claimed, has become a
stumbling block for the government in obtaining confirmation from
several countries, including Austria and Switzerland, of the
properties and bank accounts of the Soeharto family.

"Their law requires that we must provide information on the
account numbers belonging to particular names before they can
give us further information.

"The international community really intends to help us for
their own sake ... they don't want to be known as countries where
money which has been obtained unlawfully is kept," he added.

Marzuki said that since the government had yet to obtain the
exact amount of such hidden wealth, it would use an estimated
amount of US$15 billion as revealed by U.S. magazine Time.

"The figure was a result of two years of thorough research, so
we can use it as a reference ... but it could also be more than
that."

Earlier, Marzuki said that the New Zealand government had also
sent a list consisting of part of the hidden assets, and that his
office would soon send a team to the neighboring country to check
on the information.

Former president Soeharto faces graft charges for funneling
some $571 million of state funds amassed through seven charity
foundations he chaired into the businesses belonging to his
children, relatives and cronies.

The case is now in the hands of the Supreme Court, since the
lower South Jakarta District Court dropped the charges last
September after hearing medical arguments from a team of doctors
that Soeharto is mentally and physically unfit to stand trial.

In 1998, then attorney general Andi Muhammad Ghalib headed a
special team to probe Soeharto's wealth and claimed that there
was $3 million found in banks in the former ruler's name.

Soon after Soeharto denied the findings, the search for the
wealth stopped and the prosecutors halted the investigation until
Marzuki reopened the case against the former president in October
1999.

Ghalib, in a biography issued earlier this week, cited that he
had obtained sufficient evidence to drag Soeharto to court, but
the investigation was stopped by then Army chief Gen. (ret)
Wiranto and president B.J. Habibie.

Marzuki commented that such a revelation clearly shows the
pressures from the past regime on the prosecutors which in turn
hampered their investigations.

"I thank Ghalib for revealing this. I will study this
information and clarify it since the public needs to know what
really happened which caused the prosecutors to halt the past
investigation into Soeharto.

"We will likely summon those involved in making the decision
to stop the investigation to clarify the reason behind it. If
there were pressures from outsiders, then why should they have
complied?," he told The Jakarta Post by phone.

Marzuki also revealed that Bank Indonesia had frozen accounts
belonging to Soeharto's favorite son Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala
Putra, who is the convicted in a graft case and is still on the
run.(bby)