Arya Dipa – A non-active regent who has been found guilty of corruption has not yet been sent to prison even though the Supreme Court (MA) overturned a previous court verdict that had acquitted him of corruption charges.
The West Java Higher Prosecutor's Office said it was unable to execute the court ruling that had sentenced Eep Hidayat to five years' imprisonment after finding him guilty of power abuse, arguing it had not yet received a copy of the sentence.
"Ask the [Bandung] District Court why the copy of the sentence has not yet been sent here," said Fadil Zumhanna special crime assistant with the Prosecutor's Office, in Bandung, West Java, over the weekend.
The Bandung District Court's junior secretary for corruption crimes, Susilo Nandang Bagio, confirmed that the court had received a copy of the ruling to hand down a sentence of five years' imprisonment on Eep. He also said that copies of the documents had in fact been sent to both Eep and the higher court.
Eep was convicted of collecting illegal levies between 2005 and 2008 that resulted in losses of Rp 2.5 billion (US$275,000) to the state. As well as the prison term, he was also ordered to return the state money and pay Rp 200 million in fines, on pain of another three months in prison if he failed to pay.
The sentence was signed by presiding Supreme Court judge Artidjo Alkostar and member judges Leo Hutagalung and Syamsul Chaniago.
The Supreme Court's ruling came after an appeal by the prosecutor's office over Eep's acquittal on all the charges at the Bandung District Court.
During the trial in Bandung, the panel of judges, presided over by I Gusti Lanang, considered that Eep had not contravened Articles 2 and 18 of the Corruption Eradication Law as had been indicted.
Eep's lawyer Abdi Yuhana claimed that it was the Home Ministry that had to account for the policy on the collection of property tax. The particular method of tax collection, he said, had been practiced by all the provincial, regency and municipality administrations across the country.
"It is regulated by the Home Ministry. It is not just applied in Subang but in all regional administrations," Abdi said. He also criticized the Supreme Court's sentence as being biased.