TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Attorney General's Office has scheduled an examination of the Minister of Communication and Information, Johnny G. Plate. He will be examined as a witness in the corruption case for the construction of the 4G Base Transceivers Station (BTS) tower.

Ketut Sumedana, head of the AGO's Center for Information and Law, confirmed on Wednesday that the minister had been summoned. He said that the questioning would take place at the Junior Attorney General's Office for Special Crimes.

Ketut was unwilling to disclose the examination material for Plate. "That's for the investigators to say," he said on Wednesday, February 8

The AGO launched an investigation over alleged corruption in the construction of 4G BTS packages 1-5 from 2020 to 2022. The project was carried out by BLU Bakti, which operates under the Communications Ministry. The project included the construction of 9,000 BTS towers in around 7,900 villages and sub-districts with a budget of Rp11 trillion.

Undertaken by three consortiums: Fiberhome, Telkom Infra, and Multi Trans Data; Aplikanusa Lintasarta, Huawei, and Surya Energi Indotama; and Infrastruktur Bisnis Sejahtera and ZTE, the project was targeted for completion at the end of 2021. But that didn’t happen and the AGO suspected corruption as the cause of slow progress.

The AGO has named 5 suspects in the case: Bakti president director Anang Achmad Latif, PT Mora Telematics Indonesia president director Galumbang Menak Simanjuntak; human development expert from the University of Indonesia Yohan Suryanto, Huawei Investment's account director MA, and Solitech Media Sinergy commissioner IH.

In November last year, the AGO conducted a search at the Communications Ministry building and confiscated several pieces of paperwork and electronic documents as evidence. A number of the ministry's officials have also been questioned, including inspector general Doddy Setiyadi and secretary general Mira Tayyiba on January 17, 2023.

The Communications Ministry's director general of public information and communication Usman Kansong said the agency will respect all due process and cooperate with the authorities.

M Rosseno Aji

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