TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Nazaruddin is currently incarcerated in the Sukamiskin Correctional Facility in Bandung, West Java. He was sentenced to four years and 10 months imprisonment in a bribery case involving an athlete accommodations facility. The Supreme Court then increased his sentence to seven years imprisonment. He was also sentenced to six years imprisonment in a money laundering case. This brought his total sentence to 13 years.
To date, Nazaruddin has only been implicated in one case of corruption for a government project and found guilty of money laundering. At the time, the KPK said that it was investigating dozens of corruption cases involving projects handled by Nazaruddin’s companies, with state losses reaching Rp6 trillion. Together with his colleagues and employees, Nazaruddin had controlled dozens of government projects from 2006 to 2010 worth trillions of rupiah.
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The KPK confiscated some of Nazaruddin’s assets when he was named a suspect in money laundering in February 2012. One such asset was a four-storey building - used to be the office of Anugrah Nusantara owned by the former General Treasurer of the Democrat Party, in Jalan KH Abdullah Syafei in Tebet. The KPK took his money laundering case to court at the end of 2015. Seven months later, in mid-2016, a panel of judges at the Central Jakarta Corruption Court sentenced Nazaruddin to six years imprisonment in this case. Because he did not file an appeal up until the verdict became final, the KPK seized that building in Tebet.
Despite being an item confiscated by the KPK in 2012, the building’s address is still in active use in the website of Electronic Procurement Services of the City of Cirebon. Ratu Karya used that address when it won the bid for a project to improve roads, sidewalks, drainage, and bridges for the Harjamukti subdistrict in 2016. The company won this project with a bid of Rp40.9 billion.
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According to Marisi Matondang, a former Nazaruddin employee, Ratu Karya with that Tebet address was a new company established by Nazaruddin after being incarcerated at Sukamiskin Prison. That building, Marisi continued, was purchased by Nazaruddin under the name of one of his employees, Unang Sudrajat. This same testimony was given by another one of Nazaruddin’s employees, Yulianis. "A number of buildings belonging to Nazaruddin have been confiscated by the KPK, but (their ownership) could change names," said Yulianis, a former deputy director of finance at Anugrah Nusantara, when testifying in court on a number of occasions.
Despite being in prison since 2011, Marisi said that Nazaruddin has been able to establish over 50 new companies. Acting through his trusted henchpersons, he has created new companies under the names of his people. He sometimes borrows the names of other companies to bid on-and win-project tenders.
Marisi said he was often sent by Nazaruddin to manage projects before he left at the end of 2014. He took care of the tender processes several times in Cirebon. "I prepared all the documents for it," he said. They were tender documents for the construction of a building for the Arjawinangun Hospital, worth Rp30 billion, in 2014. "We borrowed the name of a local company," he said.
Read the full article in this week's edition of Tempo English Magazine
