Supreme Court defends corruption probe result

JAKARTA (JP): Secretary-general of the Supreme Court Toton Suprapto declared yesterday once and for all that the case of collusion charges brought against the Court by Justice Adi Andojo Soetjipto was closed.

He defended the conclusion of the special investigation team, which found no evidence to back Adi's claim that Court members had accepted bribes to acquit a defendant.

"There will be no reinvestigation on the alleged collusion at the Supreme Court. It's impossible ... The findings of the Supreme Court's internal supervision team are final," Toton said in a press conference yesterday.

Chief Justice Soerjono, after evaluating the report from the Court's Internal Supervision Team, announced on June 10 that the team assigned to probe the alleged collusion found no evidence to support the claim that members of the Supreme Court accepted bribes to acquit Ram Gulumal, the Gandhi Memorial School principal, from document fraud charges.

The report concluded that what really occurred was a "violation of procedure" in the way that the Gandhi Seva Loka vs. Ram Gulumal case was parceled out to the panel of justices in the Supreme Court.

The alleged collusion became public in April when a local magazine revealed a confidential letter written by Adi, who is Deputy Chief Justice for General Crimes, requesting the Central Jakarta Prosecutor's Office to push for a retrial after the acquittal of Gulumal.

Adi backed his allegations with the fact that the Supreme Court's Director for General Crimes, Sujatmi Soedarmoko, had arranged to have the case processed by Group D of senior judges under presiding Justice Samsoedin Aboebakar, instead of Group H.

Adi had written a letter to the coordinator of the Supreme Court's Internal Supervision Team to launch a new investigation into the alleged collusion.

Toton said that he had rechecked with both Soerjono and the team coordinator Sarwata regarding the alleged collusion.

"Both Soerjono and Sarwata told me that no collusion was found," he said.

However, he would not say whether he had personally read the investigation results. Adi has never been given the opportunity to study the results.

Toton denied speculation that Adi would be fired from the Supreme Court because of his comments to the press about the team's conclusion.

"I don't know about it. The issue has not been discussed, either," he said.

Separately, Adi said that the Supreme Court would not dismiss him from his position, as there is no mechanism to dismiss a justice mentioned in Law No. 14/1985 on the Supreme Court. (imn)