http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3243&Itemid=202
An Indonesian Thrush Flies the Coop
Written by Our Correspondent
Wednesday, 08 June 2011
Nunun says bye-byeRather than singing, a key witness in a bribery case takes to
the wing
Nunun Nurbaeti, the key witness in a massive Indonesian bribery case whose
lawyers said she is afflicted with a mysterious disease that prevents her from
remembering anything at all, appears to have remembered how to get out of
Singapore ahead of pressure for her return to Jakarta.
Indonesian authorities said Wednesday that the woman, the wife of a prominent
Prosperous Justice Party lawmaker and former Deputy National Police Chief,
Adang Daradjatun, was somewhere in Cambodia, having used an Indonesian passport
to pass immigration. She was said by her lawyers to have been in Singapore for
months, reportedly being treated for the mysterious disease.
Ina Rachman, her lawyer, has repeatedly told reporters in May that claims that
her client was not ill were false. "She is still ill. According to her family,
her condition is deteriorating and there's nothing they can do," Rachman said
in May.
It isn't certain when Nurbaeti arrived in Phnom Penh although Justice and Human
Rights Minister Patrialis Akbar told local reporters that passenger flight data
indicated she had traveled from Bangkok to Phnom Penh on March 23, at a time
when her lawyer was telling reporters she was undergoing treatment in Singapore.
An irritated President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered the arrest and
Nurbaeti's return. Her passport was ordered revoked on May 27 when it became
clear she was no longer in Singapore.
"The president's instruction to the foreign minister is clear - to facilitate
[Nurbaeti's return] for the ongoing legal process," Teuku Faizasyah, a
presidential staffer on foreign relations, told reporters. Indonesia and
Cambodia do not have an extradition treaty although cordial relations between
the two countries might facilitate her return, officials said.
A fast trip abroad is de rigueur for fleeing Indonesian suspects, who often end
up in Singapore. The most recent was Mohamad Nazaruddin, the former treasurer
of Yudhoyono's own Democrat Party, who was enticed home to face charges in two
graft cases involving the construction of an athletes' village for the
Southeast Asian Games in Palembang. Nazaruddin's wife is also to be questioned
as a witness in an alleged graft case related to a solar energy project at the
Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration.
Nurbaeti was alleged in February to be the bagwoman who had distributed a
literal sackful of travelers' checks to a major swath of members of the
country's House of Representatives in an effort to secure their support for
economist Miranda Goeltom's appointment as the central bank's senior deputy
governor in 2004.
Some 15 former members of Indonesia's House of Representatives have been on
trial in five separate hearings for accepting bribes, with another 11 under
indictment for seeking to secure the 61-year-old Goeltom's reappointment.
Nurbaeti appears to have been rather peripatetic for a woman suffering from
such a rare disease. Investigators for the country's Corruption Eradication
Commission (KPK) say they tracked her on frequent trips to Bangkok from
Singapore.
"We are coordinating with Cambodian law enforcement to track her whereabouts."
Amin Maulana Wicaksono, an official with the Indonesian Embassy in Phnom Penh,
told reporters in Jakarta. "We hope that if she's still in the country, we'll
be able to locate her," Amin said.
The bribes in the Goeltom case seem to have been spread equally between members
of the Democrat party, Golkar, headed by businessman Aburizal Bakrie, and the
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), headed by former President
Megawati Sukarnoputri.
Goeltom herself, who has since left the central bank, apparently is not under
threat of indictment because there is no proof that she knew bribes were being
paid to install her in office, although she was called to the Anti-Corruption
Court o answer questions. She said it had been four years since she had seen
Nurbaeti, who has ignored all summonses from the KPK.
According to testimony in the various trials, some 480 travelers' checks
totaling Rp24 billion (US$2.8 million) were handed out to lawmakers, who
claimed they thought the money was campaign contributions that weren't linked
to any particular legislative action.
The travelers' checks were purchased by a company called First Mujur, a palm
oil company, from Artha Graha Bank. Both First Mujur and Artha Graha are
subsidiaries of the Artha Graha Group, owned by a Sumatran businessman named
Tommy Winata. The checks, according to testimony, were delivered in paper
sacks to some lawmakers, color-coded envelopes to others. Officials from First
Mujur told the KPK said they had no idea how the checks had ended up the hands
of the lawmakers. They had been purchased to finance a palm oil plantation
project, they said. Although the names of the bank and the palm oil company
have been made public, Winata's name has not been mentioned in the trial, and
it is unlikely that it will be. He is considered too powerful to mess with.
Despite all of the confessions and all the prosecutorial statements, nobody yet
has asked or told why it was so important to get Goeltom reelected and it does
not appear that anybody will .
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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