Tommy's lawyers slap back at government over Bulog land swap case

9/5/2007

JAKARTA : Lawyers of Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra are preparing to slap the government with Rp 1 trillion (US$106,383) civil lawsuit to counter the Attorney General's Office's (AGO) civil action against him in the State Logisltics Agency (Bulog) land swap case.

One of the lawyers representing the youngest son of former president Soeharto in his legal battle, Elza Syarief, said Wednesday that the filing of the civil lawsuit by the AGO on behalf of the logistic agency on Aug. 22 was reckless and unfounded.

"We know that the legal fact of the Bulog case is that the Supreme Court has issued a ruling that acquitted Tommy of all criminal charges. So, why does Bulog want to file another suit over the same case?" she told a media conference.

The Supreme Court approved Tommy's request for a case review of the Bulog case in 2001 and acquitted him of all charges of corruption.

The dispute started in 1996 when Tommy's PT Goro Batara Sakti, one of the country's biggest retailers at that time, established a land swap agreement with Bulog.

Bulog had agreed to give Goro their store-house complex that occupied 50 hectares of land in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta, for an approximately 125,000 hectares of land in Marunda, also in North Jakarta.

Prosecutors in the criminal case presented evidence that half of that land was swamp.