Uncertain legal position keeps Winters away from Jakarta

JAKARTA (JP): American scholar Jeffrey Winters will not come to Jakarta to attend an economic conference here later this month as long as the government refuses to give a written guarantee that he will not be banned from entering and leaving Indonesia, his lawyer said on Friday.

Todung Mulya Lubis said officials had given confusing statements regarding his client, including the possibility of blacklisting or charging the Northwestern University professor as a suspect or even getting Interpol to send him to Indonesia.

"This legal uncertainty has forced Prof. Jeffrey Winters to decline to come to Indonesia," Lubis said in a statement.

In a letter to Lubis, the university vice president Michael C. Weston, said the university had advised Winters against returning to Indonesia at this time due to uncertainty about his fate.

"The Indonesian government first blacklisted Winters from entering the country, then removed the ban, and has now apparently lodged formal charges. This behavior suggests a level of unpredictability in the Indonesian government's posture," Weston said in the letter, dated Nov. 4.

Winters sparked controversy last month when he alleged that Coordinating Minister for Economy, Finance and Industry Ginandjar Kartasasmita was likely involved in a corruption scandal with copper and gold mining giant P.T. Freeport Indonesia in a 1991 share transaction .

Ginandjar categorically denied Winters' statement and reported the case to Attorney General Andi Muhammad Ghalib. A day after his denial, Minister of Justice Muladi announced that Winters would be barred from entering Indonesia, although he later retracted the statement.

Police have also indicated that Winters might be charged for defaming Ginandjar.

Winters said he only quoted reports by Indonesian research group Econit and the Asian Wall Street Journal on Freeport.

The Attorney General's Office questioned the chief executive officer of Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold. Inc., James Moffett, on Thursday over the share transaction allegation.

Moffett denied the charges, and said the sale of 10 percent of Freeport's shares to the Bakrie Group in 1991 was purely a business transaction, because the company was the only national company which showed any interest in purchasing the shares. (prb)