Tutut named suspect in $306m corruption case
JAKARTA (JP): The Attorney General's Office named former president Soeharto's daughter Siti Hardiyanti "Tutut" Rukmana on Friday as a suspect in a corruption case over a US$306 million project involving state oil and gas company Pertamina.
"Our investigation has led us to name her as a suspect in the case," Mulyohardjo, spokesman of the office, said.
Other suspects in the scam are former president of Pertamina Faisal Abda'oe and Rosano Barack, president of PT Triharsa Bimanusa Tunggal.
In 1987 Pertamina had a plan to construct a 320-kilometer long fuel pipeline in Java. Tutut was head of the consortium in charge of the project, and also the commissary of PT Triharsa Bimanusa Tunggal (PT TBT). The company was later appointed by Pertamina to carry out the work.
But PT TBT in 1992 applied for the cancellation of the agreement, saying it couldn't acquire enough foreign loans to finance the project.
The company claimed that it had finished 14 percent of the work and demanded that Pertamina pay work value compensation as much as $36.69 million.
Abda'oe made the payment on Jan. 7, 1993.
"It turned out that they had conducted only 6.4 percent of the work, not 14 percent," Mulyohardjo said, adding that the amount that should be paid was only $14 million.
The state suffered at least $22 million in losses.
In the morning the office summoned Tutut for questioning as a witness on Friday, but her lawyer Amir Syamsudin said she was sick.
"We have repeatedly summoned her, but she always fails to appear," Mulyohardjo said.
He said that based on further investigation in the day, prosecutors decided to name Tutut as a suspect not a witness.
"We will summon her again for questioning," he said without elaborating.
Soeharto's youngest son Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra was sentenced by the Supreme Court last year for graft in a 1995 land exchange deal which caused the state to suffer Rp 76.7 billion (US$8.07 million) in losses. A few days after President Abdurrahman Wahid turned down his request for clemency, Tommy disappeared.
He is still at large.
On Wednesday, Tutut's younger brother Sigit Harjodjudanto was grilled by the Attorney General's Office for his alleged part in the alleged $113 million mark-up of the Balongan oil refinery project in Indramayu, West Java.
The Attorney General's Office is scheduled to question former mining and energy minister Ginandjar Kartasasmita, who is studying in Harvard University, Boston, over the same case on Tuesday.
Two weeks ago, the national police questioned Bambang Trihatmodjo for nearly three hours in connection with the acquisition of the assets of textile company Kanindotex, but Soeharto family lawyer Juan Felix Tampubolon insisted that Bambang was questioned only as a witness in the case.
Soeharto was to be sent to court last year in a US$571 million corruption case but the South Jakarta District Court refused to try him on the grounds that he was too sick to stand trial. The Supreme Court earlier this month ordered state prosecutors to provide medical treatment until he is declared fit enough to stand trial.
Failure
Earlier on Friday, the Indonesia Corruption Watch (ICW) called on President Abdurrahman Wahid to replace Attorney General Marzuki Darusman for his failure to settle corruptions cases and to uphold the law.
"We need a new Attorney General who has vision, high moral integrity, credibility, courage and who is professional in eradicating corruption," ICW Coordinator Teten Masduki told a press meeting at his office.
He said the President should replace Marzuki if he is serious in his efforts to accelerate the fight against corruption, collusion and nepotism.
Teten also accused Marzuki of having a conflict of interests because as one of top executives in the Golkar party, on the one hand Marzuki must develop the party, but on the other hand he has to investigate and send other Golkar's executives to court.
Teten said that prosecutors had a certain working pattern in their handling of corruption cases: charging them in obscure indictments to allow judges to twist the criminal elements in the prosecutors' charges into a civil case.
This was reflected in the judicial process of the defendants in the Bank Bali Rp 904 billion case which ended in the court's exoneration of defendants Djoko S. Tjandra and Pande N. Lubis.
ICW had also listed hundreds of names allegedly involve in 15 corruption cases the Attorney Office failed to question.
Among the 15 cases were the corruption scam at the State Logistic Agency, the US$6 billion corruption at state-own oil mining company Pertamina, the bribery of former Attorney General M. Andi Ghalib, Rp 572.2 billion corruption at state-owned Bank Rakyat Indonesia, Rp 9.6 trillion corruption at Texmaco group company, corruption at the Clove Buffer Stock and Managing Agency, corruption scam at Paiton 1 hydraulic power plant project, corruption at Exor Balongan oil refinery project, corruption at Freeport, Rp 138 trillion corruption in the Government Liquidity Support Funds and Rp 7.1 billion corruption at state-owned insurance company PT Jamsostek.(01/sim)