Tutut to come to Attorney General's Office on Monday
Tutut to come to Attorney General's Office on Monday
JAKARTA (JP): Former president Soeharto's eldest daughter Siti
Hardiyanti "Tutut" Rukmana, a suspect in a corruption case
concerning a US$306 million project, will come to the Attorney
General's Office on Monday, her lawyer said on Saturday.
"God willing, Tutut will be present at the Attorney General's
Office on Monday and I will accompany her during the
questioning," Amir Syamsudin told The Jakarta Post by phone.
He said that Tutut, who had been summoned to the office on
Friday morning, failed to appear due to a heavy cold.
Later on Friday evening, spokesman for the Attorney General's
Office Mulyohardjo stated that Tutut had been named as a suspect
in a corruption case involving state oil and gas company
Pertamina.
Amir said the Attorney General's Office statement naming Tutut
a suspect in the $306 million corruption case was "premature." He
also charged that the decision to name Tutut a suspect was
tainted by politics.
However, Amir expressed the hope that his client would not be
arrested and detained on account of her status as a suspect.
According to Mulyohardjo, Pertamina and a consortium headed by
Tutut in 1987 signed an agreement to construct a 320-kilometer
fuel pipeline in Java. The project was undertaken by PT Triharsa
Bimanusa Tunggal, of which Tutut was the commissioner.
The company canceled the project in 1992 due to a lack of
funds. But the firm claimed that it had finished 14 percent of
the work and demanded that Pertamina pay it $36.69 million in
part performance.
It turned out that it had completed only 6.4 percent of the
work and that the amount that should have been paid was only $14
million.
Former Pertamina president Faisal Abda'oe and Rosano Barrack,
president of PT Trihsarsa Bimanusa Tunggal, have also been named
as suspects in the case.
Tutut, the eldest child of Soeharto, is not the only member of
the former first family who has been implicated in corruption.
Her brother Sigit Harjodjudanto has been questioned by the
Attorney General's Office in connection with an alleged $113
million markup of the Balongan oil refinery project in Indramayu,
West Java, while her other brother, Bambang Trihatmodjo, has been
grilled by the police over the acquisition of the assets of
textile company Kanindotex.
Worse, Soeharto's youngest son Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra,
who was convicted in a Rp 76.7 billion ($8.07) graft case, is now
the country's most wanted man after he absconded from justice in
November.
On Saturday, the police arrested Tommy's six bodyguards and
seized nine molotov cocktails, a jar of gasoline and a bullet
from the men.
The arrests were made during a raid on a house located on Jl.
Yusuf Adiwinata, Menteng, Central Jakarta conducted as part of
the effort to find Tommy.
"We are still questioning the men as to whether they know of
Tommy's whereabouts. The arrests were based on the police's
intuition about how to go about catching the fugitive," city
police detectives chief Sr. Comr. Harry Montolalu said.
The guards, identified as Mateus, Ciprianus Seda, Klitus Fan,
Maximus, Denold, and Karnoto were arrested at the rented house
which is located near Tommy's residence on Jl. Cendana.
On Jan. 8, police arrested another of Tommy's bodyguards,
identified as Indra Hasan, based on a dormant 1996 illegal
possession of firearms case.
Police also apprehended Tommy's spiritual advisor Elize Maria
Tuwahatu on Jan. 19 at the Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature theme
park (TMII) in East Jakarta for illegal possession of explosives.
(01/jun)