JAKARTA. After failing to meet the Jakarta Prosecutors’ Office summons for two months, former state-owned enterprises minister Dahlan Iskan finally showed up for questioning on Thursday for his alleged role in the massive irregularities surrounding the procurement of electricity transformers worth more than Rp 1.3 trillion (US$100 million) in 2009.

Dahlan, a media tycoon who owns the Jawa Pos media group, underwent an eight-hour interrogation on Thursday.

Jakarta Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Waluyo said that investigators would again interrogate Dahlan on Friday morning to get more testimonies from him regarding his role in the project.

Waluyo said that it was important to question Dahlan given his role as the president director of state-owned electricity company PLN when the scandal took place.

Prosecutors argued that his position allowed him to get enough knowledge about the project and any irregularities plaguing the project.

“He is still a witness and today is his first questioning related to the case. Let’s see how the investigation will progress,” Waluyo told The Jakarta Post on Thursday when asked if Dahlan could be named a suspect in the near future.

According to the Jakarta Prosecutor’s Office, the project centers on PLN’s procurement of 21 electricity transformers during the 2011-2013 fiscal year to be distributed to a number of power plants across the country, including in Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara.

So far, the Jakarta Prosecutor’s Office found that Rp 33 billion was lost as a result of two malfunctioning central electricity transformers procured by PLN.

“In total there are 13 broken central electricity transformers,” Waluyo said.

The Jakarta Prosecutors Office has named 15 suspects in the case, most of them officials from PLN.

All 15 suspects have been charged under Article 2 of the 1999 Corruption Law, which carries a maximum 20 years’ imprisonment for state officials committing malfeasance, in conjunction with Article 55 of the Criminal Code (KUHP) on collective crime.

The use of Article 55 implies that other parties may have played a role in the case, but to date the prosecutor’s office has only named the 15 individuals as suspects, according to Waluyo.

Speaking after his questioning Dahlan declined to give more details about the probe.

“This is a unique experience for me [of being part of an investigation] in which I am summoned in my capacity as a witness. I learned a lot from today’s questioning,” Dahlan told reporters.

The questioning of Dahlan at the Jakarta Prosecutor’s Office came just days after the National Police announced that they would also question him as witness in an allegedly bogus development project case in Ketapang, West Kalimantan.

National Police detective division chief Comr. Gen. Budi Waseso told reporters on Friday that Dahlan in his capacity as state-owned enterprises minister was in charge of overseeing the project.

“We will soon see [who is the most responsible one]. However, he [Dahlan] will definitely be summoned and asked to testify because he was one of those in charge of the project at the time,” he said.

Budi said the case centered around a fictitious project to open a rice field in the area.

“The funds kept flowing into the project, but there was nothing going on,” he said.

The paddy field project, worth some Rp 317 billion, allegedly involved several state-owned enterprises from 2012 to 2014. (Haeril Halim)

Editor: Barratut Taqiyyah Rafie