Heru Andriyanto, Indonesia – It's official now. The criminal charges against two deputy chairmen of the antigraft commission have been permanently terminated by Attorney General Basrief Arief.
On Monday, Basrief used his exclusive right to drop a case in the public interest, using a legal principle from the Dutch system known as deponering. "We have issued a decision to set aside the case in the public interest," Basrief told reporters.
The decision was prepared in two documents for each of the deputies, Chandra Hamzah and Bibit Samad Rianto, he said, adding that the official notification letters should reach the two men as early as today.
When asked if his office still believed a case against the two men existed and was dropped only in the public interest, Basrief replied "yes."
Previously, Bibit and Chandra themselves were split over the decision to have their cases dropped using deponering.
Bibit said dropping the case through deponering would forever leave open the possibility that he took a bribe, while Chandra welcomed deponering as a chance to end months of bad blood between the AGO and the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
Monday's decision ended a saga that began in September 2009 when the two were named suspects for extortion and abuse of power in their handling of a graft case involving businessman Anggoro Widjojo.
The case triggered public outrage after the Constitutional Court in a November 2009 open hearing aired live throughout the nation played wiretapped phone conversations between Anggoro's brother, Anggodo, and members of the National Police and the AGO indicating a plot to bring down the deputies.
The AGO decided to resort to deponering in October last year but before it could be signed, the office needed advice from key state agencies including the House of Representatives, the president's office, the National Police, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court.
Earlier, the AGO had instructed the South Jakarta Prosecutor's Office to issue a letter dropping the case, which was later successfully challenged at all levels of the court by the antigraft pair's accuser, Anggodo Widjojo.
Anggodo claimed Bibit and Chandra extorted Rp 5.1 billion ($570,000) from him in exchange for halting the criminal investigation into his brother and lifting a travel ban on him. But Anggodo is now serving time for trying to bribe the antigraft officials.