Nurdin 'may stand trial for graft again'

Nurdin 'may stand trial for graft again'

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Nurdin Halid may have to cut short his celebrations as Supreme
Court Chief Justice Bagir Manan insisted on Friday that the
businessman had not been acquitted of all corruption charges.

"He (Nurdin) was not exonerated. The judges said the
indictment against him was legally flawed and unacceptable,"
Bagir said as quoted by Antara.

Prosecutors, Bagir added, could bring Nurdin to justice again
for the same matter.

An acquittal, Bagir said, means that the prosecutors' charges
were not proven after being tried by a panel of judges, and in
such a case the defendant could not be tried again for the same
charges.

Members of Nurdin's family burst into celebration at the North
Jakarta district court on Thursday after the panel of judges said
prosecutors had failed to prove their accusation that he had
illegally imported in 2002 some 70,000 tons of sugar from
Thailand, valued at Rp 3.41 billion (some US$350,000).

The judges took into account the testimony of 19 witnesses,
who said they had never been questioned about the case, and that
their signatures on Nurdin's dossiers had been copied from the
dossiers of another suspect in the case, Abdul Waris Halid, who
is Nurdin's brother. Abdul Waris was acquitted.

The prosecutors had sought a 10-year jail term for Nurdin, who
chairs the Confederation of Primary Cooperatives Association
(Inkud).

It was the second time Nurdin had escaped prison after the
South Jakarta district court acquitted him in June of charges of
misusing a Rp 169 billion fund for cooking oil from the State
Logistics Agency.

Nurdin is appealing another North Jakarta district court
verdict last August that handed him a two-and-a-half-year jail
term for smuggling 59,100 tons of rice from Vietnam.

When asked why the judges did not address the legal matters in
the early stages of the trial, Bagir said the judges only became
aware of the problem after the witnesses had testified.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh said that he
was still waiting for a copy of the court's verdict.

"Then we can decide the next step, whether we will demand
special appeal, or a reinvestigation by prosecutors," Abdul
Rahman told reporters on Friday.

When asked about allegations that prosecutors who investigated
Nurdin falsified the defendant's dossiers, Abdul Rahman said his
office did not do anything wrong.

"It's still an allegation, we don't dare to say that they were
faked before the crime laboratory checks it," he said. "It was
the police, not us, who investigated the case. We accept a case
because we believe in the police."

National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Aryanto Boedihardjo said
he was aware of reports on several police officers who allegedly
copied witnesses' signatures.

"The Internal Affairs Division is investigating it. There are
about five or six officers," he said.

However, Aryanto refused to name the police investigators, or
to confirm whether they included former director of the fraud
squad Brig. Gen. Andi Chaeruddin, who had also signed the case
files before they were sent to the prosecutors.

Bagir said it was up to the prosecutors whether to
reinvestigate or file for appeal. But the prosecutors could not
make any changes to the dossiers, he added.