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Defendant Tommy Sumardi requests justice collaborator status in Djoko Tjandra bribery case
Prosecutors at the Jakarta Corruption Court accused Tommy of allegedly acting as a middleman between Djoko and two police generals, who reportedly received approximately Rp 8.3 billion (US$566,456) in bribes for assisting the graft convict evade capture while he was still on the run.
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Businessman Tommy Sumardi attends a hearing at the Jakarta Corruption Court on Nov. 2. He stands accused of acting as a middleman in a bribery case implicating graft convict Djoko Soegiarto Tjandra and two police generals. (Antara/Sigid Kurniawan)
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usinessman Tommy Sumardi, a defendant in a bribery case pertaining to the removal of graft convict Djoko Soegiarto Tjandra’s Interpol red notice, has offered himself up as a justice collaborator for the case that implicated him on Monday.
Prosecutors at the Jakarta Corruption Court accused Tommy of allegedly acting as a middleman between Djoko and two police generals, who reportedly accepted approximately Rp 8.3 billion (US$566,456) in bribes for assisting the graft convict evade capture while he was still on the run.
“We submit a justice collaborator request for the defendant [Tommy] because we have conveyed all the facts since the investigation until the court's hearing. As the law stipulates, he deserves to be a justice collaborator who cooperates with law enforcers [to uncover the case],” Tommy’s lawyer, Dion Pongkor, said during Monday’s hearing at court.
Dion argued that Tommy had played a big role in revealing the involvement of two police generals — Insp. Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte and Brig. Gen Prasetyo Utomo — in assisting Djoko to freely enter and travel in Indonesia despite being wanted by the police since 2009.
Read also: Two police generals indicted for accepting bribes of Rp 8.3b from Djoko Tjandra
Napoleon, in his former capacity as the National Police's international relations division head, is alleged to have accepted approximately Rp 6.1 billion for his role in removing Djoko's Interpol red notice status.
Meanwhile, Prasetyo, the former head of the Civil Servant Investigators Supervisory and Coordination Bureau at the National Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim), is accused of having accepted $150,000 in bribes for issuing a letter that had allowed Djoko to travel freely within the country.
“If our client had not provided such testimony, this [bribery] case wouldn’t have been unveiled,” Dion said as quoted by kompas.com.
The right to become a justice collaborator is stipulated under Law No. 13/2006 on witness and victim Protection.
According to Article 10 of the law, a witness who is also a suspect in the same case cannot be exempt from criminal prosecution if he or she is proven to be guilty, however his or her testimony can be made for the judge’s consideration in giving a lighter sentence. (trn)
