Jakarta – New witness testimony in a corruption case against Indonesia's parliament speaker Akbar Tanjung has further discredited his claim that he used state funds to buy food for the poor.
Tanjung is under investigation by state prosecutors for the suspected embezzlement of 3.8 million dollars from the state logistics agency Bulog in 1999.
The speaker, who also chairs the former ruling party Golkar, has said he directed the money to a little-known Islamic charity foundation, Raudlatul Jannah, to deliver food to poor villages in Java.
Two witnesses testified to state prosecutors on Friday that temporary warehouses, which Raudlatul Jannah had claimed to have used to store 12 tons of rice to be distributed to poor villages, never existed.
"The witnesses revealed that there were no such activities for the food distribution project organised by Raudlatul Jannah Foundation at the Cipinang market," a spokesman for state prosecutors, Mulyoharjo, was quoted as saying by the Jakarta Post. The witnesses were a local sub-district chief, Nukman Supriadi, and head of the Cipinang rice market, Nasion Baktino.
Investigating prosecutors have also found no evidence that food was distributed to five villages named by Tanjung, nor any evidence that trucks the foundation claimed to have used for the distribution were ever used.
There are suspicions that the funds, released under then president B.J. Habibie when Tanjung served as state secretary, were used to bankroll Golkar's campaign in the 1999 general election.
Despite Tanjung's status as a suspect, the attorney general's office decided this week not to slap a travel ban on him, allowing him to travel to Saudi Arabia next month for the Muslim Haj pilgrimage.
The parliament heard an appeal from 50 legislators earlier this week for a parliamentary probe into Tanjung's suspected embezzlement. A plenary session of the house will vote on March 7 whether to hold the requested probe, amid rising doubt over most legislators' will to conduct a house investigation.
Deputy house speaker Tosari Wijaya told the Post that legislators were too preoccupied with deliberating bills to vote on the requested inquiry any earlier than March. "We can't insist on deliberating the issue in February because it will disturb activities of our commissions," Wijaya told the daily.
The parliament's largest party, President Megawati Sukarnoputri's Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, is divided over whether to support a house inquiry, while the second and third largest parties, Golkar and the United Development Party, are firmly opposed to it.
Tanjung is the first senior official to be named as a suspect in a graft case since Megawati came to power in July with a pledge to stamp out endemic corruption.