Jakarta – The Attorney General's Office says it will not consider dropping a criminal case against the suspended chairman of Indonesia's antigraft commission, following the removal from office of the controversial police general accused of fabricating the charges.
Attorney General H.M. Prasetyo said on Friday that any notion that his office would shelve the case against Abraham Samad was "out of the question."
"Don't even talk about that, because [dropping it] would require very serious deliberations," he said. "It could only be done if it was considered to be in the public's interest."
Abraham was suspended in February as chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) after police charged him with document forgery in connection with assisting an unrelated woman submit domicile documents for a passport application.
Police on Thursday also charged Abraham's brother, Imran Samad, a subdistrict chief in their hometown of Makassar, South Sulawesi, with aiding in the alleged document forgery.
Abraham had on Tuesday, through a lawyer, called for the case against him to be dropped, arguing that the investigation had dragged on for months with neither the police nor the AGO able to compile sufficient evidence to bring it to court.
Prasetyo, though, denied this, saying there was "every indication that the file in question is compete and will be ready to submit to court" for a trial date. He suggested the case would be filed with the court within a month.
The charges against Abraham are widely seen as fabricated by the police in response to the KPK naming police general Budi Gunawan, now the deputy police chief, a suspect for bribery and money-laundering in connection with undeclared millions of dollars in transactions through his personal bank accounts.
Budi Waseso, a self-styled acolyte of Budi Gunawan's and the chief of detectives who spearheaded the investigation into Abraham – as well as similar highly dubious probes against other KPK officials – was on Friday demoted to the National Narcotics Agency (BNN), following a months-long outcry over his antics in office over the past several months.
In his parting shot to the new chief of detectives, Anang Iskandar, Waseso demanded that the cases he had instigated should be followed through, including those against Abraham, suspended KPK deputy chairman Bambang Widjojanto, and senior KPK investigator Novel Baswedan.