Mega-corruptor escapes justice

Abdul Khalik, Jakarta

After a year in limbo, the Attorney General's Office (AGO) recently received a copy of the Supreme Court's verdict sentencing graft convict David Nusa Widjaja to eight years in prison, an official announced on Sunday.

Now that the AGO had the official notification of the verdict, there would be efforts made to track down and capture David, said Kemas Yahya Rahman, the spokesman for the AGO.

However, it could be too late, because David, who was sentenced on July 23, 2003 by the Supreme Court in a multibillion dollar corruption scam, has apparently fled the country.

David, the former owner of the now-defunct Servitia Bank, reportedly left shortly after his travel ban expired on July 5, 2003, according to immigration records.

Legal regulations and bureaucratic flaws have been blamed for the sluggishness in executing the verdict.

According to the law, prosecutors can only execute a court verdict after they receive an official copy of it from the court.

The prosecutors expect the copy of the verdict to arrive within a day or two, but in many cases they often come late for various reasons, such as administrative flaws. In David's case, for example, the Supreme Court claimed that administrative shortcomings were the reason for the failure to deliver it in a timely fashion.

Moegihardjo, who heads the Supreme Court's criminal case administration division, explained that the problem had arisen following the replacement of a number of court clerks and other administrators, including those who were responsible for David's files.

Whether it was coincidental or not is an open question, but the bureaucratic mix-up in David's case was certainly compounded by the order from the prosecutor's office to free David in July 2003, as the Supreme Court did not order the continued detention of David after he lost his appeal.

David appealed after the West Jakarta District Court sentenced him to one year in prison for embezzling Rp 1.27 trillion (US$ 1.38 billion) in Bank Indonesia Liquidity Assistance (BLBI) funds on March 12, 2002. He later appealed to the Jakarta High Court, but the judges decided to give him four years in prison. He then appealed to the Supreme Court, but the justices gave him eight years.

Similar issues of poor timing have also allowed at least three other mega-corruptors to escape imprisonment, including the cases of Samadikun Hartono of Modern Bank and two other bankers, Leonard Tanubrata, the owner of Bank Umum Nasional and Setiawan Harjono, the owner of Bank Aspac. Samadikun, also left the country after the Supreme Court sentenced him to four years imprisonment for misusing Rp 1.7 trillion of BLBI funds.

Rudy Satrio, a criminal law expert from the University of Indonesia, took issue with the court's explanation of bureaucracy shortcomings for its failure to send the verdict.

He asserted that it was impossible that such an important document could be held up for a year merely due to personnel changes. "The court's administration doesn't depend on one or two employees. They have a system. There are strong indications that the delay was intentional," Rudy argued.