Sued In Pretrial, AGO Firmly Handling The Tom Lembon Case According To Law

Tom Lembong/ANTARA PHOTO/Muhammad Ramdan/foc/am)

The Attorney General's Office (AGO) confirmed that the handling of the case of the alleged corruption case of sugar imports for the 2015'2016 period, Thomas Trikasih Lembong (TTL) or Tom Lembong, was in accordance with legal procedures.

"Investigators have carried out their duties based on and according to the procedural law," said Head of the Legal Information Center (Kapuspenkum) of the AGO, Harli Siregar, as reported by ANTARA, Monday, November 18.

The answer was a response to Tom Lembong's attorney, Zaid Mushafi,'s statement in the pretrial lawsuit hearing at the South Jakarta District Court.

The lawyer said that the determination of Tom Lembong as a suspect was invalid because there was no sufficient preliminary evidence as required in Article 1 number 14 of the Criminal Procedure Code and the Decision of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia Number 21/PUU-XII/2014.

According to Zaid, the AGO's statement regarding the occurrence of state losses of Rp. 400 billion, which was not based on the results of the BPK RI audit, according to Zaid, was an act of abuse of power (abuse of power) and was a form of criminalization against Tom Lembong.

Regarding Tom Lembong's attorney's team's request to present his client in the pretrial hearing, Harli questioned the urgency of the request.

"What is the urgency? We'll see the progress of this pretrial process," he said.

The AGO previously said that in January 2016 the suspect Tom Lembong as Minister of Trade for the 2015'2016 period signed an assignment letter to PT PPI which essentially assigned the company to meet national sugar stocks and price stabilization, in collaboration with domestic sugar producers, processing raw crystal sugar into white crystal sugar as much as 300,000 tons.

Then PT PPI made a cooperation agreement with eight companies.

The AGO stated that in order to fulfill sugar stocks and stabilize prices, what is imported is white crystal sugar directly and what can only import is State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN), namely PT PPI.

However, with the suspect Tom Lembong's knowledge and approval, the approval of imports of raw crystal sugar was signed.