Claims Against 5 Defendants Are Not Ready, Trials For The Corruption Case Of Cooking Oil Postponed Until Tomorrow

Illustration of trial. (Between)

The public prosecutor (JPU) of the Attorney General's Office (AGO) admitted that he had not completed the indictment of five defendants in the alleged corruption case of export approval (PE) crude palm oil (CPO) and its derivatives at the Ministry of Trade (Kemendag).

"Today we are scheduled to read out the demands. However, because there are several things that we need to consider that are very important in the demands, until today we cannot read them, we ask the panel to give us time," said the AGO prosecutor at the Jakarta Corruption Court (Tipikor), Wednesday 21 December.

The five defendants were the former Director General of Foreign Trade of the Ministry of Trade, Indra Sari Wisnu Wardhana; policy advisor or analyst at the Indonesian Independent Research & Advisory (IRAI) as well as the Assistant Team for the Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs, Weibinanto Halimdjati alias Lin Che Wei; Commissioner of PT Wilmar Nabati Indonesia Master, Palulian Tumanggor.

Furthermore, Senior Manager of Corporate Affairs of PT Victorindo Alam Lestari, Stanley Ma; and General Manager (GM) of the General Affairs Section of PT Musim Mas, Pierre Togar Sitanggang.

Based on the prosecutor's statement, the chairman of the panel of judges, Liliek Prisbawono Adi, also gave another 1 day.

"Because the charges are not ready, I will give time for tomorrow on December 22, 2022 at 14.00 WIB. I will issue a decision to the public prosecutor to read out the charges because this is very short on time, the defendant's detention will end on January 9, 2023," said Liliek, quoted from Antara.

According to Liliek, the panel must decide 7 days before the detention ends.

"Just in case there will be legal remedies and all kinds of things," added judge Liliek.

"Thank you, our panel of judges, we will carry out the decision of the panel of judges," said the prosecutor.

In this case, the fifth act is suspected of enriching a number of corporations, namely first, the companies that are members of the Wilmar Group, namely PT Wilmar Nabati Indonesia, PT Multimas Nabati Asahan, PT Sinar Alam Permai, PT Multimas Nabati Sulawesi, PT Wilmar Bioenergy Indonesia, in total amounting to Rp1,693,219,882,064.00.

Second, companies that are members of the Musim Mas Group, namely PT Musim Mas, PT Musim Mas-Fuji, PT Intibenua Perkasantama, PT Agro Makmur Raya, PT Megasurya Mas, PT Wira Inno Mas totaling Rp626,630,516,604.00.

Third, the companies that are members of the Green Permata Group are PT Permata Hijau Palm Oleo, PT Nagamas Palmoil Lestari, PT Permata Hijau Sawit, and PT Pelita Agung Agrindustri with a total of Rp124,418,318,216.00.

Thus, the total state financial loss totaled Rp6,047,645,700,000.00 as reported by BPKP Audit Result Number: PE.03/SR 511/D5/01/2022 dated July 18, 2022.

The state financial loss is a direct result of irregularities in the form of misuse of the CPO product PE facility and its derivatives by manipulating the fulfillment of DMO/DPO requirements.

By not distributing DM), the state must issue BLT funds in order to reduce the burden on the people as consumers. The state's financial losses include the burden that the government had to bear in the form of distributing BLT cooking oil to minimize the burden of 20.5 million poor households due to scarcity.

However, the actions of the five defendants have also had an impact on the scarcity and high price of cooking oil which has caused a high burden on the economy felt by the community and companies that use the raw materials for CPO derivative products, causing state economic losses of Rp12,312,053,298,925.00.

For their actions, the defendants are threatened with criminal acts Article 2 paragraph (1) or Article 3 in conjunction with Article 18 of Law Number 31 of 1999 concerning the Eradication of Criminal Acts of Corruption as amended by Law no. 20 of 2001 jo. Article 55 paragraph (1) of the 1st Criminal Code.