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Soeharto's Daughter Named Suspect in Corruption Case
Indonesian former president Soeharto's eldest daughter Siti Hardiyanti "Tutut" Rukmana was named as a suspect by the Attorney General's Office (AGO ) in a corruption case on Friday.
Spokesman for the AGO Mulyohardjo said Tutut was declared as a suspect in the case concerning the country state oil and gas company Pertamina's oil pipeline project on Java island.
"Our investigation has led up to name her as a suspect in the case," Mulyohardjo was quoted by the Jakarta Post Saturday as saying.
The decision followed the finding of several documents implicating her involvement in the corruption over a 306 million U.
S. dollars project, he added.
Other suspects in the scam are former president of Pertamina Faisal Abda'oe and Rosano Barack, president of PT Triharsa Bimanusa Tunggal.
In 1987 Pertamina had a plan to construct a 320-kilometer long fuel pipeline in Java. Tutut was head of the consortium in charge of the project, and also the commissary of PT Triharsa Bimanusa Tunggal. The company was later appointed by Pertamina to carry out the work.
But PT Triharsa Bimanusa Tunggal in 1992 applied for the cancellation of the agreement, saying it couldn't acquire enough foreign loans to finance the project.
The company claimed that it had finished 14 percent of the work and demanded that Pertamina pay work value compensation as much as US$36.69 million.
Abda'oe made the payment on January 7, 1993.
"It turned out that they had conducted only 6.4 percent of the work, not 14 percent," Mulyohardjo said, adding that the amount that should be paid was only US$14 million, causing at least US$22 million of losses to the state.
Soeharto's youngest son Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra was sentenced by the Supreme Court last year for graft in a 1995 land exchange deal which made the state to suffer 76.7 billion rupiah (US$8 million) in losses. A few days after President Abdurrahman Wahid turned down his request for clemency, Tommy disappeared. He is still at large.
On Wednesday, Tutut's younger brother Sigit Harjodjudanto was grilled by the AGO for his alleged part in the alleged US$113 million mark-up of the Balongan oil refinery project in Indramayu, West Java.
Soeharto was to be sent to court last year in a US$571 million corruption case but the South Jakarta District Court refused to try him on the grounds that he was too sick to stand trial. The Supreme Court earlier this month ordered state prosecutors to provide medical treatment until he is declared fit enough to stand trial.
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