Indonesia awaits US report on slain
corruption witness – is this the long arm of Indonesia’s BIN secret service in
play here?
Businessman
killed in Los Angeles had been due to give evidence against politicians in
graft case
Anti-corruption investigators are waiting to hear from U.S. police about
the death of a key witness. Businessman Johannes Marliem was found dead with a
gunshot wound to the head at his home in Los Angeles on Thursday.
He was a witness in a multi-million-dollar
corruption case involving senior politicians, including Parliamentary Speaker
Setya Novanto, who also leads Indonesia's second-biggest political party
Golkar.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir told
Anadolu Agency that it was waiting for police in California to deliver
information about Marliem’s death.
“The party that has the right to decide is the U.S.
police,” he said. “We are waiting for information from them.”
Saut Situmorang, deputy head of the Corruption
Eradication Commission, said Marliem’s death was important “because he has
something to do with the case we are dealing with.”
Marliem was the director of Biomorf, a U.S.-based
biometrics company, that was awarded the contract to supply an automated
fingerprint system for a national electronic ID card program launched in 2011.
According to investigators, around half of the
project’s 5.8 trillion Indonesian rupiah ($434 million) budget was divided
between 37 suspects, including Novanto and 23 other members of the House of
Representatives.
Fear
for life
The scam is said to have cost the state around $190
million in losses.
Novanto was described by U.S. President Donald
Trump as “one of the powerful men and a great man” during a news conference at
Trump Tower during his presidential campaign.
He was temporarily forced to step down over
corruption allegations in 2015 after he was heard seeking a $4 billion payment
from a U.S. mining company.
Prosecutors have revealed that Marliem paid a
$200,000 as a bribe to Sugiharto, a former senior Home Ministry official who
has been jailed for five years in the case.
Alongside Novanto, two former high-ranking members
of the then ruling Democratic Party, Anas Urbaningrum and Muhammad Nazaruddin,
have also been named as key suspects in the case. It is believed they may have
influenced lawmakers to pass the project’s budget.
Days before his death, Marliem had told the Kontan
newspaper that he feared for his life. “I do not want to be published as a
witness,” he said. “It could be my life is now threatened.”
In the interview, Marliem also denied having given
bribes to Sugiharto.
In its 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index,
Transparency International ranked Indonesia 88 out of 168 countries. President
Joko Widodo has stressed his commitment to eradicating corruption.
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