Former top Indonesian prosecutor gets 20 years for corruption

Jakarta - Indonesia's anti-corruption court on Thursday sentenced a former senior Indonesian prosecutor to 20 years in prison for receiving a 660,000-dollar bribe to drop a high-level embezzlement case.

The court also ordered Urip Tri Gunawan, a former top prosecutor at the Attorney General's Office, to pay a 500-million-rupiah (54,645-dollar) fine.

 The court said Gunawan had hurt the Indonesian people by failing to act to combat rampant corruption in the country.

 In previous court hearings, government prosecutors demanded a 15-year prison, charging Gunawan with receiving a bribe from a businesswoman and committing extortion against the former chief of the now-defunct Indonesian Banking Restructuring Agency.

 Gunawan is the first prosecutor to be charged in an Indonesian corruption scandal, and his case has led to a number of other senior prosecutors being grilled. It has also prompted calls for the resignation of Hendarman Supandji, the country's attorney general.

 Gunawan is one of several prosecutors whose secretly taped conversations have been played during the corruption trial of businesswoman Artalyta Suryani.

 In late July, the anti-corruption court handed down a five-year prison sentence to Suryani, who was found guilty of paying the 660,000-dollar bribe to Gunawan to drop an investigation into Sjamsul Nursalim, one of Indonesia's richest men who is accused of embezzling about 3 billion dollars in emergency bailout loans to his bank during the Asian financial crisis in 1998.

 Gunawan was arrested in March as he left Nursalim's home in Jakarta with 660,000 dollars in cash, days after the Attorney General's Office dropped its 10-year investigation into the banker, citing a lack of evidence.

 The scandal goes to the heart of whether Indonesia is capable of shaking its reputation as one of the most corrupt countries in the world and whether those who plundered billions of dollars from state coffers in the 1990s would ever face justice.

 In response to a question from the court, Gunawan calmly said he would consult with his attorneys before making a decision on whether to file an appeal.

 In previous court hearings, Gunawan denied the bribery charges, claiming the money was linked with a business.

 The anti-graft agency has the power to make arrests, take over investigations from the police and fast-track sensitive cases.

 During President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration, several high-ranking officials, including a former religious minister and a former governor, have been jailed for graft.

 But critics said some of the worst cases of graft have yet to be tackled and the campaign has not taken on some of the country's most powerful figures.//dpa