Chevron staff gets two years in prison for phony environmental program.

Hans Nicholas Jong, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Wed, 07/17/2013 9:39 PM | National

Kukuh Kertasafari

The panel of Jakarta graft court’s judges has sentenced Kukuh Kertasafari, employee of PT Chevron Pacific Indonesia (CPI) to two years in prison for his role as the head of a bioremediation team that
endorsed a series of bogus environmental programs that inflicted state losses.

“The defendant has been found guilty of violating Law No.20/2001 on Corruption Eradication and therefore sentencing the defendant to two years in prison and Rp 100 million (U$ 10,000) in fines,” Presiding judge Sudharmawatingsih said on Wednesday.

The sentence was lighter that the five years and Rp 500 million in fines earlier sought by the prosecutors.

Judge Sudharmawatiningsih said the panel highlighted Kukuh’s failure to detect wrong doings behind the appointments of the 28 bioremediation locations that later on turned out to be uncontaminated.

However the panel saw a dissenting opinion by judge Slamet Subagyo, who insisted that the prosecutors assessment was invalid and therefore could not be used as evidence against Kukuh.

Commenting on the verdict, PT CPI spokesman Dony Indrawan said the company respected the ruling but vowed to assist Kukuh in his legal attempt to file an appeal to the higher court. He also felt assured that the company’s bioremediation projects had been exercised in full compliance with the government’s existing regulations.

Beforehand the same court had sentenced Herland Bin Ompo, director of PT Sumigita Jaya, a private contractor that had been assigned by PT CPI to six years in prison and Rp 250 million (U$25,000) in fines.

PT CPI had paid U$6.9 million to PT Sumigita Jaya to do bioremediation projects, restoring land contaminated by PT CPI’s oil. Later on, PT CPI asked the government to reimburse the payment it had made to PT Sumigita.

However, the prosecutors then found out that none of the Sumigita’s locations were contaminated by oil and therefore the prosecutors claimed that the government had reimbursed the cost for nothing. (hrl/dic)

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