Hadi Poernomo - JP/Jerry Adiguna

The precedent set by a recent and controversial pretrial verdict is breathing new life into the legal strategies of graft suspects in the country, with Hadi Poernomo the latest figure to file a petition on Monday with the South Jakarta District Court that challenges the Corruption Eradication Commission'€™s (KPK) ongoing investigation into his alleged corruption.

Hadi, a former Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) chairman, follows in the footsteps of fellow graft suspects Democratic Party cofounder Sutan Bhatoegana and former religious affairs minister Suryadharma Ali. All three are attempting to replicate the success of Comr. Gen. Budi Gunawan, who in February won a pretrial hearing that ordered an end to the KPK'€™s investigation into his alleged acts of bribery.

In the verdict, South Jakarta District judge Sarpin Rizaldi approved Budi'€™s pretrial petition and ordered the KPK to lift the latter'€™s graft suspect status, despite the law granting no authority to a judge to rule on the legality of a suspect'€™s status through a pretrial mechanism.

'€œWe have registered our pretrial proposal at the court today [Monday],'€ Hadi'€™s lawyer, Yanuar Wasesa, told The Jakarta Post on Monday. On Friday, the lawyer had ruled out the possibility of taking such a legal step.

The KPK named Hadi a suspect for his decision during his time as the Finance Ministry'€™s director general of taxation between 2002 and 2004 to unilaterally approve a request by Bank Central Asia (BCA) for income-tax leniency. The decision caused Rp 375 billion (US$28.3 million) in state losses '€” the amount in taxes that BCA should have paid to the state.

Hadi'€™s petition amounts to a last-ditch effort to avoid detention after failing twice to answer a KPK
summons.

On March 6, Hadi failed to inform the KPK about his absence for a questioning, while on March 12 he claimed to be receiving treatment at a hospital in Jakarta for a heart problem. Suryadharma behaved similarly before registering his pretrial petition at the same court last month.

Meanwhile, Sutan, who earlier said he had no intention of filing a pretrial petition, decided to challenge his graft-suspect status after Budi'€™s pretrial lawyer, Razman Arif Nasution, convinced him to do so.

Yanuar said he had crafted his petition with strong arguments. '€œAccording to Article 25 and 26 Law No.9/1999 on the taxation directorate, the KPK cannot investigate any decision made by the taxation directorate unless the decision is involves bribes or kickbacks. In Pak Hadi'€™s case, there were no bribes or kickbacks at all,'€ Yanuar said.

The case began on July 12, 2003, when BCA issued a request at the income tax directorate for a tax write-off after a bad-loan restructuring in 1999 worth Rp 5.7 trillion.

The tax office rejected the request on March 13, 2004, but one day before the deadline for the bank to pay taxes, Hadi, acting in his capacity as tax boss, annulled the decision and granted BCA'€™s request.

'€œThe KPK was wrong when it used the letter as evidence in its investigation, because the letter is just Pak Hadi'€™s opinion [about the directorate'€™s refusal of BCA'€™s request],'€ Yanuar said, adding that the KPK'€™s calculation of state losses was fabricated, as the BPK never issued an audit of state losses on Hadi'€™s
decision.

Separately, KPK acting commissioner Johan Budi said that, to no avail, he had asked the Supreme Court to issue a circular allowing the KPK to challenge Budi'€™s controversial pretrial verdict through a cassation mechanism to prevent more graft suspects from doing so in the future.

'€œAfter a discussion with Supreme Court chief justice [Hatta Ali] it is unlikely that the court will issue such a circular,'€ Johan said.

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