Tommy's lawyers snap back at govt over Bulog land swap case

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 09/06/2007 2:22 PM

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Lawyers for Hutomo ""Tommy"" Mandala Putra are preparing to slap the government with Rp 1 trillion (US$106,383) civil lawsuit to counter the Attorney General's Office's civil action against him in the State Logistics Agency (Bulog) land swap case.

One of the lawyers representing the youngest son of former president Soeharto in his legal battle, Elza Syarief, said Wednesday that the filing of the civil lawsuit by the Attorney General's Office on behalf of the logistics agency on Aug. 22 was ""reckless and unfounded"".

""We know that the legal facts of the Bulog case are that the Supreme Court has issued a ruling that acquitted Tommy of all criminal charges. So why does Bulog want to file another suit over the same case?"" she said at a media conference.

The Supreme Court approved Tommy's request for a case review of the Bulog case in 2001 and acquitted him of all charges of corruption.

The dispute started in 1996 when Tommy's PT Goro Batara Sakti, one of the country's biggest retailers at the time, established a land swap agreement with Bulog.

Bulog had agreed to give Goro a warehouse complex that occupied 50 hectares of land in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta, in exchange for approximately 125,000 hectares of land in Marunda, also in North Jakarta.

Prosecutors in the criminal case presented evidence that half of that land was swamp.

Director for prosecutions at the Office of the Junior Attorney General for State Administrative Crimes, Yoseph Suardi Sabda, said the Attorney General's Office had a legal right to file a civil case. He cited article 1119 of the Civil Code, which stipulates that verdicts in criminal cases do not block the possibility of bringing related civil suits.

He said that the Attorney General's Office suspected that there had been mark-ups in the calculation of the land price on Goro's asset in Marunda, which had been handed down to Bulog through the agreement.

""We have evidence that we are going to use in the civil trial session. Now, let us test each other's evidence through the trial. We will let the judge decide the case,"" he told The Jakarta Post.

The first trial session in the civil suit will be held on Sept. 17 at the South Jakarta District Court with Presiding Judge Haswandi to lead the examination process.

The Attorney General's Office filed the civil suit South Jakarta District Court on Aug. 22 in response to a ruling by a court in Guernsay, a British crown dependency off the northern French coast, on May 23 that ordered the Indonesian government to prove that the 35 million euros owned by Tommy's corporation, Garnet Investment Company, had come from illegal activities.

The court gave Indonesia three months to prove that Tommy Soeharto had been involved in shady dealings in his own country. The Attorney General Office's suit was meant to encourage the Guernsay court to extend the time allotted.

The Attorney General's Office has demanded that Tommy, along with other three suspects in the civil case, PT Goro Batara Sakti, Goro's commissioner, Ricardo Gelael and former Bulog chief, Beddu Amang, pay Rp 500 billion to the state because of alleged losses based on allegedly illegal actions taken during the land swap agreement process.

The Guernsay court has agreed to continue withholding the funds, currently being held at the BNP Paribas branch in Guernsey. (10)

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