Heru Andriyanto – The Attorney General's Office is putting together a new corruption case against Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra in an attempt to keep the injunction on his 36 million euros ($52 million) kept in the British independency of Guernsey.
Attorney General Hendarman Supandji, however, declined to give details about the case when he met reporters on Friday.
"It's confidential, but we do have a case against Tommy," the chief prosecutor said. "Because the case is still at the investigation stage, we can't reveal it to the public."
The Guernsey court recently rejected the Indonesian government's request to extend the freeze on Tommy's funds because it failed to present strong evidence that the youngest son of former president Suharto was involved in a corruption case.
Hendarman said the new case has been under AGO's inquiry over the last few months, dismissing allegations that it was meant to disrupt Tommy's candidacy for Golkar Party's chairmanship.
"The graft case is being handled by the deputy for special crimes," Hendarman said.
Tommy has been implicated in various graft cases following his father's resignation in May 1998, but he won the legal battle with prosecutors in addition to the Guernsey ruling that favors him.
In February, the AGO lost its bid to recover Rp 4 trillion ($400 million) in a civil case related to the collapse of Tommy's auto firm, PT Timor Putra Nasional, which was founded with massive government subsidies when his father was still in power.
Several months earlier, the Supreme Court ordered the finance minister, represented in court by the AGO, to return to Tommy a total of Rp 1.2 trillion in funds seized for debt repayment.
In November, the AGO gave up an investigation into monopolistic practices by the Clove Buffer and Market Agency (BPPC), founded in the 1990s by Tommy, because he had repaid the agency's debts to the government.
Tommy was freed from prison in October 2006 after serving only five years of a 15-year jail term for ordering the murder of a Supreme Court judge who had convicted him of corruption in a land scam. While in prison, however, the court acquitted him of the graft charge.