T

he Attorney General’s Office (AGO) has hinted that it will soon halt its investigation into former House of Representatives speaker Setya Novanto in the Freeport lobbying case, citing an investigation deadlock as the main reason behind the plan.

The deadlock in question is the AGO’s failure to summon for testimony oil and gas businessman Muhammad Reza Chalid, the alleged partner in crime of Setya in the case, who left the country just days after the AGO investigation began.

“The case has yet to be dropped, but as you already know, some people are not around to testify. We’ll seek advice from legal experts on whether the case has garnered enough evidence [without Reza’s testimony] or whether it still lacks evidence,” Attorney General M. Prasetyo told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

Setya and Reza allegedly met several times with then-Freeport Indonesia president director Maroef Sjamsoeddin in 2015 to offer their help for the company to get a contract extension for its gold mine, one of the world’s largest, in Papua. Setya allegedly claimed to have won the approval of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla to secure shares and projects from Freeport Indonesia in exchange for helping the firm secure its contract extension.

The lobbying effort, some of which was caught on tape, forced Setya to sit through an ethics council tribunal at the House. The AGO also stepped in to prosecute Setya for graft in the Freeport case while the hearing was underway. Facing the threat of ethical and legal charges from the House and the AGO, Setya quit his job as House speaker, a move that forced the ethics council stop the hearing; and the AGO subsequently slowed down its investigation into Setya.