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Anti-graft agency is a tyrant: House deputy speaker Fahri Hamzah
Jakarta Globe - March 23, 2017
Their names were mentioned in court on Tuesday (21/03) during the trial for export company E.K. Prima's country director Ramapanicker Rajamohanan Nair, who was charged with bribing Handang Soekarno – a former senior official at the Finance Ministry's Directorate General of Taxation – in an attempt to dodge paying back taxes.
Fahri refused to comment about the case and insisted he was a good taxpayer. "I'm clean, there's no problem with my taxes," he said on Wednesday.
He did say that the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) might have been retaliating against his criticism of the way they have been handling the electronic ID card, or e-KTP, graft case.
"I've been criticizing the KPK in the past couple of days over the e-KTP issue. The KPK is using this [tax evasion] trial to attack [me]," Fahri said.
KPK made the connection between Fahri and the tax evasion case in November last year, but his name had been kept secret before Tuesday's trial.
"They [the KPK] think they cannot be criticized since they carry a noble mission. They are like tyrants back in the middle ages who believed they were noble," Fahri said.
The deputy speaker recalled how the KPK targeted him and his Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) in the beef import fiasco in 2013. Fahri was the party's spokesman at the time and saw first-hand when the agency raided the party's office and rounded up 75 of its members.
He pointed out that the KPK's suspicion of a "beef import mafia" was completely unfounded, since the court only convicted three people in the case: two businessmen and former PKS chairman Luthfie Hasan Ishaaq.
"Where was the mafia? There wasn't one. But the KPK's accusation nearly destroyed the party," he said.
Fahri said the KPK should be rightly criticized for its prolonged investigation of the e-KTP graft case, which had dragged on for three years.
Meanwhile, Fahri's colleague Fadli Zon suspected that their names were implicated in the tax evasion case because they were involved in the massive – and at times violent – street protest rally against incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama on Nov. 4 last year.
The tax evasion case has also implicated President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's brother-in-law, Arif Budi Sulistyo, the operational director of Rakabu Sejahtera, a furniture company.
His name has been mentioned several times in the case as a liaison and business partner of the main suspect in the case, Ramapaniker.
Source: http://jakartaglobe.id/news/anti-graft-agency-kpk-tyrant-says-deputy-house-speaker-fahri-hamzah/.
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