No plans to try major corruption suspect: AGO

No plans to try major corruption suspect: AGO

Abdul Khalik
Jakarta

The Attorney General's Office (AGO) announced that it had no
immediate plans to submit the corruption case of former State
Logistics Agency (Bulog) chairman Bustanil Arifin to the district
court for trial despite the fact that his case file had been
completed two years ago.

The office spokesman Kemas Yahya Rahman said Monday that his
office did not know when they would forward the files to the
court as prosecutors were still looking for evidence.

"We are still examining the case file. I don't know when we
can submit it to court. I think we must find some more evidence
to complete the case file," said Kemas.

Kemas's statement, however, contradicted a statement issued by
the head of the South Jakarta prosecutor's office Himawan Kaskawa
that the case file was already completed and ready for trial.

Bustanil, who is also the former state minister for
cooperatives and small and medium enterprises, had been declared
a suspect in a case involving an inordinate price mark-up for
land purchase in 1990 by his ministry.

At that time, Bulog disbursed Rp 10 million, which was
approved by Bustanil, for the ministry to buy a plot of land in
Kuningan, South Jakarta with a market price of Rp 1.8 billion.
The land belonged to the second eldest son of former president
Soeharto, Bambang Trihatmodjo.

The graft case was initially investigated by the Jakarta
prosecutor's office before the Attorney General's Office took it
over in 2002.

Himawan denied allegations that his office had stopped
investigating the case, saying that he would wait for the green
light from the AGO to hand the case over to the courts.

"After we received the case file from the police, we announced
that the case file was complete. We have to expose the case to
the AGO. It is now up to them," said Himawan.

The AGO has to submit the case file to the district court for
trial.

Police submitted the case file to the prosecutor's office in
June 2002. The Jakarta prosecutor's office announced subsequently
that the file had been completed and was ready for trial.

Legal expert Luhut M. Pangaribuan questioned how a completed
case file could get bogged down in the prosecutor's office for
two years without any transparent efforts to bring the case to
court.

"Usually, a case file will only stay at the prosecutor's
office for around two weeks before being forwarded to the court.
If there is no announcement that the AGO had stopped the case,
then we can say they neglected their duty," said Luhut.

He further argued that if they were not negligent then
obviously, something was wrong with the AGO.

"The public may think that people at the AGO have taken bribes
from Bustanil to delay the legal process. They must give us a
logical explanation over this delay," said Luhut.

He called on the AGO to quickly submit the case to court to
prevent further public speculation.