Bagus BT Saragih, Jakarta – The Jakarta Corruption Court heard on Wednesday a recorded conversation between former Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) chairman Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq and his aide, Ahmad Fathanah, in which the two spoke, sometimes in Arabic, about a plan to rig the nation's beef import scheme.
Sitting as defendants were Juard Effendi and Arya Abdi Effendi, directors of beef importer PT Indoguna Utama.
The two have been indicted for bribing Luthfi, using Fathanah as a middleman, in a hope that Agriculture Minister Suswono, a PKS senior member, would relax beef import quota to give room for Indoguna to procure imported beef.
"Ismak... ismak, huwa hiya tudkhil tsmaniya alaf batruk ton laheim," Fathanah said in Arabic in the recorded conversation.
JA Jamaluddin, an Arabic language expert from the Saudi Arabian embassy, who was summoned to the trial hearing to interpret the conversation, said that Fathanah was saying, "Listen, I will talk in Arabic. She wants to procure 8,000 tons of beef."
Fathanah is believed to be referring to Indoguna president director Maria Elizabeth Liman, who has also been named a suspect in the scandal.
Fathanah went on, "Ee tsamaniya allaf alheim ee huwa hiya ta l kullu annukud arbaik miliar cash." Jamaluddin translated it into "For the procurement of the 8,000 tons of beef, [Maria] is willing to pay Rp 40 billion [US$4.08 million] in cash as fees." The recording relayed Luthfi's response, also in Arabic, saying, "So, only 8,000 tons?"
The conversation contradicted Luthfi's repeated claims that Fathanah was only using his name for his own gains.
Luthfi, the only PKS politician charged in the case to date, has been accused of using his influence as then-PKS leader to lobby Suswono to raise the import meat quota awarded to Indoguna.
Both Luthfi and Fathanah have also been named suspects by the KPK. Arya and Juard were caught red-handed by the KPK shortly after the two gave Rp 1.3 billion, believed as a down payment of the Rp 40 billion, to Fathanah in January. The latter was arrested a few hours later.
The recordings also revealed that the two were planning a strategy to convince Suswono that additional beef import quota would be normal and not make the policy look irregular.
"We must ask Maria to convince [Suswono] that the data from the BPS [Central Statistics Agency] is inaccurate. Self-sufficiency could endanger our beef resiliency. Ask [Maria] to bring data [to support our argument]," Luthfi told Fathanah in the recording.
The telephone recordings also suggested that the relationship between Luthfi and Fathanah was very close. Fathanah, for example, once opened a conversation by saying, "[Luthfi], your wives have been waiting," which was followed by laughter of the two. "Which ones?" Luthfi responded.
Before the court hearing, Luthfi admitted one of the voices in the recording was his. He, however, claimed that he did not take Fathanah seriously. He said that he responded to Fathanah because he was "forced" to. Fathanah, meanwhile, said that his comments to Luthfi were only "jokes."