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A lawyer for beleaguered Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum said on Thursday that there was no evidence linking his client to a crime, no matter what a string of witnesses have told the Anti-Corruption Court.

“There have now been 14 witnesses in court but not one has said that Mr. Anas told them to do anything,” Patra M. Zen said.

There must be at least two forms of evidence to charge a person with a crime, Parta said, and the authorities have none against Anas.

High-profile graft suspect Muhammad Nazaruddin, a former treasurer of the Democratic Party, has accused Anas of involvement in rigging the tender for the construction of the athletes’ village in Palembang for last year’s Southeast Asian Games.

He says Anas used the money to fund his successful campaign for the party’s chairmanship.

Several of Nazaruddin’s former employees have testified in the Jakarta court that some of the money from the athletes’ village project was sent to Anas.

But Patra said none of the testimony or evidence proved that Anas had received any money in return for steering the project to contractor Duta Graha Indah.

He pointed out that Anas had resigned from the House of Representative in June 2010, before the contract went to DGI.

“Legally, not a single thing points to the involvement of Anas Urbaningrum. It is irrelevant for him to even appear as a witness,” Patra said.

Nazaruddin has claimed that Anas was linked to several companies belonging to or created by him. Patra, however, said shareholders would have had to approve any positions held by Anas at the companies, and that never happened.

Patra said plenty of Nazaruddin’s former workers had testified in court that he had used their names to fill fictitious positions at the companies.

Democratic Party secretary general Saan Mustopa also denied votes had been bought at the party’s congress in 2010, when Anas was elected chairman.

But a former head of the Minahasa chapter of the Democratic Party in North Sulawesi, Diana Maringka, has said that she received $7,000, RP 30 million ($3,400) and a BlackBerry cellphone to vote for Anas during the election.

Nazaruddin’s lawyer, Junimart Girsang, has said that the decision by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to name Democratic lawmaker Angelina Sondakh a suspect proved that Nazaruddin was speaking the truth.

Nazaruddin had accused Angelina and several other members of the House Budget Committee of accepting money to allot funding to certain projects.

Additional reporting by Ezra Sihite and Rizky Amelia