Graft suspect Angelina Sondakh, right, embraces corruption convict Mindo Rosalina Manulang after the latter testified at Angelina’s bid-rigging trial at the Jakarta Anti-Corruption Court on Thursday. Photo Credit:(JG Photo/Afriadi Hikmal)
The wide-reaching fallout from the bid-rigging trial of Muhammad Nazaruddin could pale in significance to the “tsunami” that fellow former legislator Angelina Sondakh threatened to unleash if she went down in the same case, a witness says, Jakarta Globe reported news.
Mindo Rosalina Manulang, a graft convict and former fixer for Nazaruddin, testified at Angelina’s trial on Thursday that the threat was made last December when Angelina visited Rosalina in jail.
She said that Angelina, at the time still a member of the House of Representatives with the Democratic Party, was stressed out about accusations made against her by Nazaruddin, the former Democrat treasurer, at his trial for bid-rigging in the awarding of a contract to build the athletes’ village for last year’s Southeast Asian Games.
“She told me she had just come from Anas’s house,” Rosalina told the Jakarta Anti-Corruption Court, referring to Anas Urbaningrum, the Democrat chairman and Nazaruddin’s business partner.
“She said she didn’t want to take the fall on her own.”
Nazaruddin, who was convicted in April, claimed that Angelina, Anas and a host of other Democrats were involved in a range of bid-rigging cases handled by his and Anas’s Permai Group, a holding firm for a string of shell companies.
In February, Angelina was named a suspect for rigging procurement projects won by the shell companies and administered by the Education Ministry and Sports and Youth Affairs Ministry.
Tsunami at Senayan
Rosalina told the court that Angelina claimed to have received assurances from Anas that she would not be touched by the Nazaruddin fallout, but she added that if she was outed, she would reveal “the rot at the House.”
“She said, ‘If I’m implicated, I’ll be very angry. I will bring upon Senayan [the House]a tsunami greater even than Nazaruddin’s,’ ” the witness said.
Responding to the testimony, a visibly emotional Angelina confirmed that she had visited Rosalina in jail, but denied making any kind of threat.
Instead, she claimed it was Rosalina who urged her to implicate Anas in several corruption cases.
“Do you remember you told me that if I wanted to be safe, I should drop a dime on Anas?” she asked during her cross-examination of the witness.
“I didn’t want to say anything about Anas because I didn’t know anything.”
She then broke down crying and later refused to give her version of what was said during the jail visit.
Angelina is accused of taking Rp 12.5 billion ($1.3 million) and $2.3 million to steer a host of procurement projects toward universities nationwide and to supply equipment to the sports ministry.
Nothing to hide
Anas has been repeatedly pointed out by Nazaruddin as the owner and head of the Permai Group, and of taking huge chunks of state projects won by the group’s various shell companies.
These include Rp 50 billion in kickbacks from a Rp 1.7 trillion project to build a sports stadium in Hambalang, Bogor, and another Rp 80 billion from a Rp 2.2 trillion project to build power plants in East Kalimantan and Riau.
During Nazaruddin’s trial, several witnesses testified that money connected to the projects had been funneled to support Anas’s successful election as chairman of the Democrats during a party congress in Bandung in 2010.
Sports Minister Andi Mallarangeng has also been implicated by Nazaruddin in the SEA Games and Hambalang cases, and has been questioned by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).
The Democrats, who have long insisted on the innocence of the chairman and minister, say they have nothing to hide in this matter and have welcomed a probe to prove it.
Hayono Isman, a member of the party’s board of patrons, said that if Angelina really did make the threat to reveal all, then the KPK should look into it.
“I fully support any effort by the KPK to investigate and get to the bottom of the matter,” he said on Thursday.
“If what Angelina said turns out to be true, then it indicates an insidious process that may have been going on at the House for quite a long time.”
He also suggested, however, that if Angelina really did make the threat, it might have been out of bitterness or anger, and that she did not necessarily have any knowledge of any systematic wrongdoing at the House.
Budget brokers
In her testimony last week, Yulianis, a former Permai Group accountant, linked Angelina to 13 projects at the education and sports ministries where the contracts were won by Permai Group companies.
She claimed that Angelina and I Wayan Koster, from the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), were the two legislators in charge of manipulating all the projects handled by House Commission X, which oversees education and sports affairs.
She said that between March and November 2010, the company paid out Rp 20.85 billion and $1.85 million in cash to the two legislators to steer projects to the Permai Group’s subsidiaries.
Yulianis said the company wrote down the payments as “support funds” for Angelina and Koster to allegedly get other Commission X legislators to agree on their choice for the winning contractors.
Rosalina, the former marketing director at Anak Negeri, a Permai Group company, corroborated the accountant’s statement and claimed that all the oversight commissions at the House had their designated “budget brokers” who were responsible for rigging bids.
She said she had dealt with many of them and that her work as a fixer was tough because there were “more than 10” shell companies like the Permai Group all offering kickbacks as they angled for lucrative projects.
Dropping names
Yulianis identified the Golkar Party’s Azis Syamsuddin, from House Commission III on legal affairs, as being the point man for a construction project at the Attorney General’s Office.
She also said the brokers on Commission VIII, which oversees religious affairs, were Zulkarnaen Djabar from Golkar, Abdul Kadir Karding from the National Awakening Party (PKB) and the PDI-P’s Said Abdullah and Olly Dondokambey.
“For Health Ministry projects [overseen by Commission IX], it’s a politician from the PKS [Prosperous Justice Party], but I forget his name,” Yulianis said.
Koster has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. The KPK has imposed a travel ban on him but has not yet charged him with any crime.
Zulkarnaen, meanwhile, confessed earlier this year to rigging a project to procure Korans for the Religious Affairs Ministry. The Rp 20 billion project was won by a company at which his son is a director. Both father and son have been named suspects in the case.
Azis and Karding have denied the allegations against them, with Azis also at the forefront of House efforts to pass legislation curtailing the powers of the KPK.
Olly, a deputy chairman of the House Budget Committee, which has long been rocked by graft allegations of its own, has not commented on the allegations made by Yulianis.
Hunger strike
In a related case, Neneng Sri Wahyuni, Nazaruddin’s wife, has threatened to stage a hunger strike unless she is transferred from the KPK’s detention center to the Pondok Bambu Women’s Penitentiary in East Jakarta.
Neneng, who is charged in another bid-rigging case involving a Permai Group company, said she wanted to move in order to be able to receive visits from her three children, according to her lawyer, Elza Syarief.
“Neneng said she would stop eating for 20 days and die here,” the lawyer said on Wednesday. “She feels she is being discriminated against.”
Elza pointed out that at the KPK’s detention center, visitors were only allowed on Mondays and Thursdays, but Neneng’s children were in school and thus unable to see their mother.
She said the KPK had no grounds to reject Neneng’s request for a transfer, arguing that a request on identical grounds by Angelina had been granted.
“They both have children, so what’s the difference?” Elza said.
Neneng has been implicated in a solar power equipment procurement project handled by Anugerah Nusantara, one of Nazaruddin’s shell companies.
The Rp 8 billion contract from the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry was originally awarded in 2008 to a company owned by Anas, Alfindo Nuratama Perkasa, which then handed it over to Nazaruddin’s company.
The KPK alleges that the project resulted in Rp 2.8 billion in state losses, but Neneng insists she had nothing to do with it, claiming her job at the company was limited to purchasing stationery.