•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

Prosecutors at the Anti-Corruption Court on Monday demanded a three and a half year jail term for a businessman charged with giving a lawmaker a $294,000 bribe earlier this year.

Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) prosecutors have charged Hontjo Kurniawan, the commissioner of construction company PT Kurnia Jaya Wirabhakti, with bribing Abdul Hadi Djamal, a former National Mandate Party (PAN) lawmaker, “in a bid to secure his company a seaport revitalization project connected to a stimulus package that was being discussed at the House of Representatives.”

At a separate trial, the same team of prosecutors, led by Suwardji, demanded a three-year prison term for Darmawati Dareho, a Ministry of Transportation official, who is accused of helping to set up the bribe.

Hontjo and Darmawati declined to comment on the prosecutors’ sentencing demands.

Defense attorneys for the two are scheduled to present their arguments next Monday.

Last week, both defendants admitted to the court their roles in the bribery scandal, which the prosecutors acknowledged as a mitigating circumstance when making the sentencing demands.

Abdul Hadi has claimed that Johnny Allen Marbun, a member of the House budgeting committee who is from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Democratic Party, was the one who approached Hontjo and demanded the bribe.

Johnny, according to Abdul Hadi, requested 3 percent of the cost of the project Hontjo’s company would receive and threatened not to include the project in the stimulus package unless the businessman acceded to the demand. The former PAN lawmaker also claimed he gave Rp 1 billion ($98,000) to Johnny’s assistant, Resko.

In his courtroom testimony, Johnny denied ever demanding money or having an assistant named Resko.

In a separate case, Basyir Ahmad Barmawi, the director general of immigration, said businessman Anggoro Wijaya, who was named a graft suspect by the KPK last month, has been out of the country for almost a year. “He left the country on July 26 last year,” Basyir said. “We received the travel ban request from the KPK in August.”

Commission spokesman Johan Budi said the immigration office should have alerted the KPK earlier. “Only recently did we learn the suspect had fled the country,” he said. “We hoped that he would turn himself in. We will alert Interpol so we can locate him.”

Anggoro, who is a director of PT Masaro Radiokom, is accused of giving more than $8,000 to Yusuf Erwin Faishal from the National Awakening Party (PKB) and to Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) lawmaker Tamsil Linrung in 2006. The money was allegedly in return for naming Anggoro’s company the supplier of a radio communications system to the Ministry of Forestry.

Yusuf was sentenced by the court to four and a half years in prison in March, while Tamsil has yet to be charged.