Dicky Christanto, Jakarta – The Attorney General's Office (AGO) said Friday they had proof that prosecutor Cirus Sinaga had conspired with attorney Haposan Hutagalung to extort his client, former tax officer Gayus Tambunan.
Marwan Effendy, the AGO's top internal monitoring official, told the press the AGO had evidence and testimony that Cirus had given a draft copy of Gayus' indictment to Haposan, which Haposan later allegedly used to extort money from Gayus during his embezzlement trial.
The AGO said such a draft should have been confidential and was not to be given to defendants. The draft said the prosecution would demand a year of probation for Gayus. In order to extort money from Gayus, Haposan blacked out the word "probation" so it appeared prosecutors would ask that Gayus be imprisoned for a year.
Gayus, who had amassed billions of rupiah from helping companies dodge taxes, claimed he gave US$50,000 to Haposan to reduce his charges. Marwan said the AGO had reported the allegations to the National Police, and expected to discover whether or not Cirus received money from Gayus through Haposan.
"It is as clear as day. There's no way [Cirus] would give [a copy to Haposan] if there was no hanky-panky. It must be money. If not money, what else?" Marwan said.
It was reported that Cirus ordered a copy of the indictment from the Tangerang Prosecutors' Office, which, along with the AGO, handled Gayus' embezzlement case earlier this year.
The AGO said on Wednesday Cirus received the document from prosecutor F, believed to be Fadil Regan, who in turn was faxed a copy from B, believed to be Benu El Amrusya, a clerk in the Tangerang Prosecutors' Office.
Marwan said apart from the criminal charges to be handled by the National Police, Cirus would be dismissed if proven guilty. National Police chief detective Comr. Gen. Ito Sumardi said he would set up a special team to respond to the AGO report.
Earlier, an ad hoc team set up by the police to investigate case engineering behind Gayus' acquittal in March named Cirus and a pre-indictment prosecutor, Poltak Manulang, as suspects.
The team, however, failed to gather enough evidence to charge the pair. They did bring two police officers and a judge to trial in South Jakarta District Court for allegedly engineering the case.
The AGO previously defended Cirus and other prosecutors allegedly involved, saying the testimony about Cirus' involvement was hearsay.
The esprit de corps display took a different turn following Gayus' statement in court earlier this month that he was shown a draft indictment that stated that he would be sentenced to a year in prison. Gayus seemed surprised to learn the original draft said he would be given a year's probation.
In a court session in South Jakarta District Court on Friday, Nazran Aziz from the Tangerang Prosecutor's Office testified that while he was the one who appeared active in reading out the indictment and sentence at Gayus' trial, Cirus and three other prosecutors were the ones responsible for the indictment.
"Cirus Sinaga, Fadil Regan, Ika Savitri and Eka Kurnia were the ones," he said as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.
Nazran said the draft of Gayus' proposed sentence had gone through several hands: three officers, including himself, at the Tangerang Prosecutor's Office, the Tangerang High Prosecutor's Office and prosecutors at the AGO.
Presiding judge Albertina Ho questioned the involvement of that many offices, especially the AGO, in one embezzlement case.
Nazran said the AGO was involved because the case was forwarded from the National Police.