Pekanbaru, Riau, (Antarariau) - The Attorney General's Office (AGO) has questioned tens of employees of the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Task Force (SKK-Migas) in connection with the alleged corruption case of Chevron's bioremediation project, an oil official said.
"Many of them have even given testimonies at court sessions," SKK-Migas's Public Relations Division Head Elen Biantoro said when contacted from Pekanbaru through the phone here on Wednesday.
SKK-Migas's Head Rudi Rubiandiri who was also contacted through the phone previously said that he was concerned over the alleged corruption case of the bioremediation project in Minas, Riau province.
He said that the case had created a number of oddities which could become blunders for the attorney general's office.
Elen Biantoro said that his side regretted the attorney general's office's step to take forceful effort against Bachtiar Abdul Fattah, the vice president of the Supply Chain Management (SCM) of PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI).
The Attorney General's Office has detained the general manager of Chevron Indonesia's Sumatra operations as a suspect in the oil giant's bioremediation project graft case.
Bachtiar Abdul Fattah is being held at Jakarta's Cipinang Penitentiary after he was questioned by the South Jakarta District Court.
According to Elen, the effort to detain Bachtiar was baseless and was against legal norms.
However, the attorney general's office was firm to carry out legal steps and forcibly took Bachtiar who it considered was not cooperative when prosecutors summoned him.
"We at the SKK-Migas hope that the case would be settled thoroughly and fairly without involving criminalization," Elen said.
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.
