Ulma Haryanto & Camelia Pasandaran – Justice and Human Rights Minister Patrialis Akbar performed another back flip when he denied on Friday that he had ever said bribery convict Gayus Tambunan would get a sentence cut.

"I never said yesterday that Gayus would get remission," he said at his office. "All of a sudden [the media] said he would. I was reprimanded [over that by the president]."

He claimed reporters had misquoted him. "The quote was not correct, and it was combined with other people's comments," he said.

However, Patrialis was quoted by all major media outlets on Thursday as saying that Gayus was among the 33,000 prisoners nationwide who would receive a remission in commemoration of Independence Day, Aug. 17. He claimed the former tax official, who is serving a 12-year sentence for bribing a judge and police investigators, was eligible for the sentence cut because his crime "was not corruption."

"As long as he has been in jail for nine months, that is the only requirement," Patrialis said on Thursday.

He was singing a different song on Friday, though. "Gayus won't get a remission because his case was a corruption case, with multiple charges, and he hasn't served out a third of his sentence," he said.

He added that his ministry had not received all the names of those eligible for remission.

Earlier in the day, Patrialis refused to confirm his prior statement that Gayus's crime did not constitute corruption. "Your news comes as a surprise to me," he told journalists. "Don't do that, we're friends, right?"

When confronted with a recording of his statement on Thursday, Patrialis laughed and walked away. Separately, the palace confirmed that Gayus would not get a sentence cut.

Denny Indrayana, the presidential adviser for legal affairs and corruption eradication, said that previous reports to the contrary were "a blunder."

He pointed out that Gayus did not meet the criteria for a remission, which Patrialis previously said would not be extended to corruption, terrorism, illegal logging or drug convicts.

This is not the first time that Patrialis has made a claim and then promptly denied it.

Late last month, he announced that a team from his ministry was heading overseas to pick up then-fugitive graft suspect Muhammad Nazaruddin. At the time, he said he hoped there would be "an extraction" of the former Democratic Party treasurer.

But a day later, he denied ever saying anything to that effect. "Let's get this straight: I never said we were going to pick up Nazaruddin. Again, I never used the expression 'pick up,'?" he said.

That fiasco earned him criticism from security experts and politicians alike, including those from his own National Mandate Party (PAN).

[Additional reporting from Antara.]