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AGO looks into possible crimes in prosecutor's alleged meetings with Djoko Tjandra abroad

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Jakarta Post - August 4, 2020

Jakarta – The Attorney General's Office (AGO) is looking into alleged law violations by a prosecutor who had reportedly made face-to-face contact with graft convict Djoko Soegiarto Tjandra while the latter was still on the run outside the country.

According to a report received by the AGO's junior attorney for special crimes (Jampidsus), the prosecutor, identified as Pinangki Sirna Malasari, had allegedly met Djoko several times abroad before the fugitive was finally arrested and brought back to Jakarta late last month.

"We are currently still looking into the result of the preliminary probe. We have yet to start [investigation] since the dossier was just submitted [on Monday] to the prosecutors in the special crimes unit," said Febrie Adriansyah, the director of investigations at the AGO's junior attorney for special crimes' office, on Tuesday.

"We will decide later whether this case will be followed up by an investigation or not," he added as quoted by kompas.com.

The scandal involving Pinangki came up after a photo circulating on social media showed her together with Djoko and his lawyer Anita Kolopaking in a meeting which allegedly took place in Malaysia.

After investigating some witnesses, the AGO's supervisory unit declared that Pinangki had committed an ethics violation, as she was found to have taken nine international trips to Singapore and Malaysia in 2019 without permits. She was suspected to have met with Djoko during the several trips that she had taken.

While the exact motive of Pinangki's meeting with Djoko is still unclear, Deputy Attorney General Setia Untung Arimuladi decided to remove Pinangki from her post as an official in the planning bureau under the AGO's junior attorney general for development on July 29.

Djoko, a convict in the high-profile Bank Bali corruption case, was arrested in Malaysia and brought back to Indonesia on July 30 in a planned operation by the National Police.

He was previously at large for 11 years after fleeing Indonesia a day before the Supreme Court sentenced him to two years in prison and ordered him to pay Rp 546 billion (US$54 million) in restitution for his crime.

The convict, who is now detained in Salemba Penitentiary in Jakarta, previously made headlines in June after he managed to return to Indonesia undetected, have his identity documents issued and request a case review over his conviction to the South Jakarta District Court.

Previously, the National Police had also removed three high-ranking officials from their posts for aiding Djoko Tjandra while on the run. Among the three, the police named Brig. Gen. Prasetyo Utomo a suspect for issuing a travel letter for Djoko and brought multiple charges against him.

Source: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/08/04/ago-looks-into-possible-crimes-in-prosecutors-alleged-meetings-with-djoko-tjandra-abroad.html

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