President's Intervention On Remeditation Case Needed

Pekanbaru, Riau, May 27 (Antara) - President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono needs to interfere in Cheveron`s bio-remediation project to help straighten out the case, ReforMiner Institute said. "This case has serious impact on oil and gas investment in the country in the future," Komaidi Notonegoro, the deputy director of ReforMiner, said after attending a discussion here on Monday. The corruption case in the bio-remediation project in the working area of PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI) in Riau has implicated seven suspects. Komaidi said that the case which was now being handled by the Attorney General`s Office (AGO) was a forcible case. It will have impact on national gas and oil investment later on because there was no clear legal provisions with that regard. "If am a contractor, I will relocate my investment from the oil and gas sector because it will face a great risk which will cause not only a big loss for the company but also create bag image to the investment in this sector," he said. He said that the real contract would also have the same mind to avoid unfair of the implementation of the rules. Komaidi said that there could be two choices the contracts would likely take in the face of the problem, namely diverting its investment from mining to the other sector or it maintained its investment in the mining sector but in other countries. He said that such a phenomenon had been felt even before the bioremediation case of Chevron was raised, where the volume of funds invested in the exploration of oil continued to decline. The AGO is investigating an alleged corruption case in the Chevron bioremediation project involving CPI and two companies it had named to carry out the project in Riau province. A director for the company that carried out the bioremediation project for CPI has been found guilty and sentenced to five years in jail for causing more than US$3 million in state losses. Ricksy Prematury, the director of Green Planet Indonesia (GPI), one of the companies hired by Chevron Indonesia to carry out bioremediation projects on its behalf, was also ordered by the Jakarta Anti-Corruption Court to pay a Rp200 million ($20,000) fine or spend another two months in jail. In this case, the AGO has named seven people as suspects. Among them were working partners of Chevron in the bioremediation project such as Herland and Ricksy. The two have been sentenced to five and six years in jail respectively. Five are Chevron`s employees. Three of the five, namely Kukuh, Widodo and Rumbi, are now in the trial process at the Anti-corruption Court in South Jakarta. The other two are still in the process of questioning. The AGO has been pursuing the case since 2011 and last year named seven people, including five Chevron employees, as suspects. In December 2012, the South Jakarta District Court ruled that the AGO had not obtained enough preliminary evidence against four Chevron officials accused in the case and ordered the AGO to drop the case and clear the suspects of all charges. But AGO said in January that the agency would not comply with the district court ruling, arguing that a copy of the verdict had not been sent to the AGO.