T

he National Police'€™s Criminal Investigation Unit questioned Dahlan Iskan on Monday to account for an '€œirregular tender'€ between state-owned electricity company PLN and national oil company Pertamina.

Dahlan'€™s questioning came after he was previously named a suspect in a separate botched rice field program in Kalimantan.

'€œDahlan was summoned as a witness in his capacity as a former PT PLN director,'€ Dahlan'€™s lawyer Yusril Ihza Mahendra told reporters on Monday at the police headquarters in South Jakarta.

Yusril said the irregularity in the case consisted of two different prices of diesel oil that PLN had paid to Pertamina in 2010 for supplying the former'€™s power plants throughout Indonesia. The initial price was more expensive than a new one made through a tender in 2010, Yusril said.

According to Yusril, the irregularity occurred due to a different purchasing mechanism that PLN had made with Pertamina.

In 2010, when Dahlan was PLN director, he needed a total of nine million tons of fuel to run the country'€™s majority of diesel power plants.

'€œBefore Dahlan became PT PLN director, all fuel supply was purchased from PT Pertamina under a non-tender mechanism. The gas from PT Pertamina was too expensive,'€ Yusril explained. He added that the costly gas price from PT Pertamina had pushed Dahlan to find cheaper fuel from other companies.

'€œIn 2010, Dahlan decided to buy fuel through tender. However, out of the nine million [tons] needed, seven million was still purchased from PT Pertamina, while another two million would be provided by companies that would win the tender,'€ he explained.

The two million tons was open for any company, local or foreign, that was capable of providing cheaper fuel as demanded by PLN.

'€œTender regulation stipulates that if foreign companies won the tender, they should appoint local companies as suppliers, which would provide oil as cheap as the foreign firms demanded,'€ Yusril said.

Companies that took part in the PLN'€™s tender would compete to supply two million tons of oil spread across five locations throughout Indonesia. Surprisingly, Pertamina took part in and won one out of the five competitive tender locations. A foreign oil company, Shell, won the other four, and Shell in turn handed over two locations to Pertamina. So, in total Pertamina got three locations.

It was this tender mechanism that altered prices. The initial purchase was, of course, more expensive because the later was made through a tender mechanism [which came with a cheaper price],'€ Yusril said, adding that police hadn'€™t named any suspects in the case.

Head of the criminal unit, Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso, appeared to hesitate in commenting further about the case.

'€œWe summoned Dahlan because he must have knowledge [about the tender irregularity]. He was PT PLN director at the time [when the tender took place],'€ Budi said on Monday at police headquarters.

The police opened the new case after investigating a previous PT. Trans-Pacific Petrochemical Indotama (PT TPPI) graft case, which had caused Rp 2 trillion (US$150 million) in state losses.

Previously, the police had said that they would also question Dahlan regarding their probe into the rice field project, worth approximately Rp 317 billion, and which took place during his tenure as state-owned enterprises minister under former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. (saf)