South Sulawesi Attorney General's Office re-examines former acting governor in pineapple seedling corruption case
Makassar (ANTARA) - The South Sulawesi High Prosecutor’s Office (Kejati Sulawesi Selatan) has once again examined former Acting Governor of South Sulawesi Bahtiar Baharuddin (BB) in connection with the ongoing investigation into alleged criminal acts of corruption in the procurement of pineapple seedlings for the 2024 fiscal year, valued at more than Rp60 billion.
“After confirming with the investigators, they confirmed that today there is indeed a summons for the former acting governor with initials BB. This is for further deepening of the examination by the BPKP (Financial and Development Supervisory Agency) team,” said the Head of Legal Information Section of the South Sulawesi Kejati, Soertami, in Makassar on Thursday.
She explained that from the results of the investigators’ examination, several legal facts have been found regarding the involvement of the former acting governor. Therefore, the BPKP team needs to confirm those facts based on BPKP’s own version.
The examination concerns confronting the suspect in relation to justifying the BPKP’s calculation results in accordance with the findings of the Kejati’s Special Criminal Investigation team, which will be responded to by the suspect again.
“Later, BB will also respond again regarding those legal facts. The assessment is up to them; clearly, both the investigator’s version and the suspect’s version have equal rights,” she said.
“Regarding the value issue, it has not yet been released. Of course, before releasing the value, BPKP must be selective and careful, hence the confrontation about the investigation facts found by the investigators with BPKP itself,” she added.
Regarding the initial estimated loss previously stated by the Head of the South Sulawesi Kejati (Didik Farkhan) of more than Rp57 billion from the Rp60 billion budget (total loss) on that project, Soertami said this is what is being deepened.
“It might be like that (deepened by the Special Criminal Investigation investigators) BPKP with its own version,” she said after the second examination of the former acting governor of South Sulawesi at the local Kejati office.
Meanwhile, after undergoing the second examination, suspect BB stated that he respects the legal process carried out by the South Sulawesi Kejati team.
“This case is an investigation into the procurement of pineapple seedlings. Actually, it is a technical field case. So, we respect it; yesterday’s development, after two months in detention, only yesterday the examination was conducted.
“Yesterday, a confrontation was held with the PPK brother, UP, then brother HS, then the provider brother RE. Alhamdulillah, the results of the confrontation are all ‘clear’ (clear), there is no connection with me,” he said.
Meanwhile, his legal adviser Irwan Muin stated that normatively, the parties who should be held accountable in goods and services procurement are usually the department head as the budget user, the budget user proxy (PPK/PPTK), partners, supervisors, and consultants.
“In this case, we are still evaluating and deepening the evidence of his involvement as the acting governor at that time with the implementation of this goods and services procurement. Because if it is stretched to the governor’s position, in my opinion, it is not within the governor’s authority regarding its implementation,” said Muin.