Supreme Court defends corruption probe result
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)