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.