Jakarta (ANTARA News) - Pretrial proposal by corruption suspect Sutan Bhatoegana filed with the South Jakarta district court should be rejected by the court, Nur Chusniah, the legal bureau chief of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) said.

"As regulated in Article 82 point(1) letter (d), pretrial request is not valid when the case is already in the process of investigation in a court," Nur Chusniah said here on Tuesday.

Bhatoegana is seeking to submit pretrial proposal to the South Jakarta district court against KPK for charging him with accepting bribe in the debate over budget for the energy and mineral resources ministry in 2013.

Bhatoegana was former chairman of the Commission VII of the parliament dealing with energy.

Nur Chusniah said her statement is backed up by a law expert M. Yahya Harahap that pretrial motion could not be proceeded if the proposal came when the case is already handled by court.

Nur said the case of Sutan Bhatoegana at the Central Jakarta Special Corruption Court on April 6 already started with investigation of the identity of the accused, and Bhatoegana already confirmed his identity in answer to a question by the presiding judge Artha Theresia.

"Meanwhile, investigation at the pretrial only started with the agenda of reading the request," she said.

A similar statement was given by a judge of the South Jakarta district court I Made Sutrisna saying that even if the pretrial process is proceeded the substance remain invalid.

"Pretrial concerns only administrative process before trail by court began. If the court already declared the dossiers are complete and started session , pretrial motion would automatically lose its place," Made said.

He said pretrial motion has to be dropped to prevent overlapping in the investigation of the case.

However, the one having the power to declare the pretrial request invalid is the pretrial judge, he added.

The judge for the Bhatoegana pretrial case is Asiadi Sembiring as the sole judge to handle the pretrial case of a former chairman of the Democrat Party of former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono .

He filed pretrial request with the South Jakarta district court on March 4.

Bhatoeganas lawyer, Eggy Sudjana, said the naming of Bhatoegana a corruption suspect, his arrest and confiscation of his assets by KPK were not valid as there was o evidence showing that Bhatoegana had received bribe money from the Upstream Oil and Gas Redulator (SKK Migas) or the energy and mineral resources ministry.

In addition, the two investigators probing BHatoegana case were no longer police officers.(*)

Editor: Heru Purwanto
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