Tutut named suspect in $306m corruption case

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)