Rizky Amelia – The chief patron of a scandal-ridden Islamic party, already implicated in a major graft case, now faces allegations of illegally profiting from the sale of a home bequeathed by its owners to their children.
Hilmi Aminuddin, the chairman of the Prosperous Justice Party's (PKS) board of advisers, is accused of selling the 700-square-meter plot of land and house in Cianjur, West Java, to Luthfi Hasan Ishaaq, the former PKS president currently standing trial in a corruption case, for three times the price that he paid for it.
The accusation was made on Thursday by Yusuf Supendi, a co-founder of the Justice Party (PK), from which the PKS later evolved, and a long-time critic of the current PKS leadership.
Speaking after reporting the matter to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) in Jakarta, Yusuf said he was acting on behalf of Faizal Rahmat, the sixth of seven children of Zainal and Umi Marikah, the Cianjur couple who had bequeathed the property in question to their children.
Yusuf said he had filed a criminal complaint against Hilmi after the transaction with Luthfi was revealed during Hilmi's questioning by the KPK in late May.
"I've filed a report with the KPK. We've already prepared a lawyer to take this matter to court," he said.
He added that if the case went to trial, then Hilmi could be charged with violating the 2008 Law on Bequeathments, which explicitly prohibits the sale of property that has been bequethed by its owner to another party.
During Hilmi's questioning on May 27, in relation to Luthfi's case, it was revealed that the former had sold the land and house to Luthfi in 2006 for Rp 1.5 billion ($152,000).
Faizal said the property rightfully belonged to him and his siblings, but because of a pressing need for money, they had sold it to Hilmi for Rp 500 million, with the intention of buying it back later.
He said the initial sale did not go against the law on bequeathments because Hilmi was the father-in-law of Isma Aidah, the youngest of the seven siblings, and hence the property would remain in the family.
"But then Hilmi went and sold it for more than a billion," Zainal said. "He bought it from us when we were desperately in need of money, so it's regrettable that he would then exploit the situation for commercial profit."
The controversy is the latest to hit Hilmi and the PKS, which is reeling from the graft scandal in which Luthfi is mired.
Luthi was arrested in February on charges of accepting kickbacks to rig the awarding of a government contract for importing beef. He has also been indicted for laundering the bribe money through various property transactions.
Hilmi has also been implicated by witnesses in the beef case, in which his son, Ridwan Hakim, is alleged to have been the go-between between the Agriculture Ministry and the company angling for the beef import contract.