TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A day after receiving a letter requesting assimilation and parole for Muhammad Nazaruddin, Deputy Chair of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Laode Muhammad Syarif brought together some preliminary and criminal investigators. "We wanted to see how far Nazaruddin’s cases at the KPK extended to," said Syarif in mid-February. "We had to scrutinize which cases are already solved, and which ones aren’t."
Two months earlier, the prison where Nazaruddin is serving time-the Sukamiskin Correctional Facility in Bandung, West Java-submitted the request for assimilation and parole to the Directorate-General of Correctional Facilities of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights.
The request was then forwarded to the KPK on February 5. "Based on regulations, we must ask for the recommendation of the law enforcement agency which investigated the case of the convicted party," said chief of the Public Relations Division of the Directorate-General of Correctional Facilities, Ade Kusmanto, on Thursday last week.
Sentenced for two different cases, Muhammad Nazaruddin was supposed to serve a prison term of 13 years. Entering prison in 2011, he is set to be released in 2024 if he serves his full sentence.
The Supreme Court sentenced Nazaruddin to seven years imprisonment in the Jakabaring Athlete Accommodations project in Palembang. He was found guilty of a Rp4.6 billion bribe through the Permai Group, his group of companies. In 2016, four years after the verdict in the athlete accommodations case, the same court sentenced Nazaruddin to six years imprisonment in a corruption case and for money laundering. This raised his total sentence to 13 years imprisonment.
However, Nazaruddin will not have to serve out his whole sentence. Until now, 28 months have been taken off his punishment due to sentence reductions. He received five months off his sentence on Indonesia’s 72nd Independence Day in August of last year.
Due to these many reductions, Nazaruddin is deemed to have served more than two-thirds of his sentence. Based on Law No. 12/1995 Regarding Correctional Facilities, a convict can be paroled after serving more than two-thirds of their sentence.
This planned parole triggered a polemic. Last month, part of a letter from the KPK’s Enforcement Division to the Sukamiskin Prison circulated. The ‘regarding’ section of that letter mentioned that there are no outstanding criminal cases for Muhammad Nazaruddin. The third point made in that letter underlined that statement by saying: "Based on the data of KPK’s Directorate of Investigation and Prosecution, the convicted party has not been involved in any other criminal cases up until now." The letter is dated November 17, 2017.
Read the full article in this week's edition of Tempo English Magazine
