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)