TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Sr. Comr. Victor Simanjuntak, the director of special economic crimes at the National Police’s Criminal Investigation Directorate, said the investigation into the case entangling Bambang Widjajanto, an inactive deputy chief of the Corruption Eradication Commission, could not be stopped.
According to Victor, one of the requirements to issue a letter of order to stop investigations, known as the SP3, is when a case is not categorized as a crime.
“Bambang’s case is a crime. There’s no way it will be dropped,” Victor said at the National Police Headquarters in Jakarta on Wednesday, May 20, 2015.
Two other reasons to stop the investigations are for the sake of the law, when a suspect dies, and lack of evidence. Victor said that Bambang’s case did not meet the two requirements and that his case files had entered the second stage.
Earlier, Bambang temporarily suspended his pretrial lawsuit challenging the police's decision to name him as a suspect. Bambang said he was giving time for the police to issue the SP3, based on the verdict by the Association of Indonesian Advocates (Peradi) declaring that Bambang did not violate the ethical code as a lawyer during a trial at the Constitutional Court (MK) back in 2010.
Bambang's lawyers will proceed with the lawsuit should the police fail to respond to the request by Monday, May 25, 2015.
Victor, meanwhile, asserted that Peradi’s verdict was irrelevant to the investigation process since the association was just an institution that evaluated violations of lawyers' ethical codes.
DEWI SUCI RAHAYU
