TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has granted clemency to former Riau governor Annas Maamun convicted of corruption in a case of land conversion in Kuantan Singingi District, Riau Province, his lawyer said. "After I checked it, it turned out to be true," Eva Nora told ANTARA on Tuesday.

Her client has applied for clemency to the President on his own or through his family, Eva believed.

"Any convict or his/her family can apply for clemency to the President directly without his/her lawyer," she said.

Maamun, the 10th governor of Riau, who was in office for seven months from February to September 2014, will have his sentence commuted by one year, she said.

As such, Annas who was sentenced to seven years in jail will be set free in 2020.

The Bandung corruption court had sentenced Annas to six years in jail on June 24, 2015. The Supreme Court, thereafter, increased the sentence to seven years after it turned down his appeal.

Annas was convincingly proven guilty of being involved in a graft case related to the conversion of forested land to oil palm plantation in Kuantan Singingi District, Eiau Province, the court had ruled.

Annas was found guilty of receiving a bribe of Rp500 million from businessman Gulat Medali Emas Manurung, who is now chief of the Indonesian Association of Oil Palm Growers (Apkasindo).

ANTARA