Jakarta – Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid said Friday he had ordered prosecutors to arrest a former mines and energy minister implicated in a graft scandal linked to a son of former dictator Suharto.
Wahid said Ginanjar Kartasasmita, who held several cabinet posts under Suharto and is now a deputy speaker of the national assembly, was due to be arrested on Friday by the Attorney General's office.
"Today as I left, [Attorney General] Marzuki Darusman called me saying the arrest would be carried out today," Wahid was quoted by the Detikcom news portal as telling Muslim worshippers after Friday prayers in the East Java town of Ponorogo.
Wahid himself is facing the threat of impeachment after parliament censured him in February over his alleged involvement in two multi-milllion dollar financial scandals.
MPs have said they will issue a second censure in a month although Wahid protested his innocence in a rebuttal to the censure on Wednesday at parliament.
Kartasasmita has been officially named as a suspect in a corruption case in the early 1990s involving a company owned by one of Suharto's sons, Bambang Trihatmojo and the state oil and gas monopoly, Pertamina. The scandal caused around 24.8 million dollars in losses to the state, according to prosecutors.
Amien Rais, speaker of the national assembly, warned Thursday that the legal process against Kartasasmita should not be politcally motivated. "My concern is that the local process should operate in a proper way and there should be no political motive behind Ginanjar's case," Rais was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying.
Former Pertamina director Faisal Abda'oe, named as a suspect in the same case, was moved on Thursday from the attorney general's detention centre to house arrest, the Kompas daily said. Abda'oe had been held at the detention centre since March 21 after he was named as a suspect in the scandal.
The transfer was made because he was suffering from heart problems, the daily said. A spokesman for the attorney general's office could not be reached for immediate comment.