SBY’s ‘household chief’, PhD tutor in hot seat

JAKARTA. Sylvia Sholehah, believed to be responsible for the First Family’s household expenses, attended a court hearing on Tuesday as a witness in the high-profile Hambalang sports complex graft case that has implicated several of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s inner-circle.

In a dossier read out by a team of prosecutors at the Jakarta Corruption Court, Sylvia was accused of using her influence to help officials at the Youth and Sports Ministry gain approval for additional funds from the Finance Ministry for the construction of the Hambalang sports complex in Bogor, West Java.

The initial cost of the project, which was initially set at Rp 125 billion (US$10.37 million), was allegedly inflated to Rp 2.5 trillion under a multiyear financing scheme.

According to the dossier, Sylvia, who goes by the nickname Ibu Pur, sent SMS messages in 2010 to a Finance Ministry budget official by the name of Sudarto, who oversaw the project, to ensure progress in the project.

While Sylvia admitted to sending the SMS messages, she insisted that she only did so because she was asked by Arif Gunawan, a businessman believed to be connected to the State Palace.

“The late Arif Gunawan asked for my help to SMS Sudarto. I said that I did not know him. He [Arif] sent the texts and then I was given Sudarto’s cell phone number. I just forwarded the messages [from Arif to Sudarto],” she claimed, adding that she had forgotten the content of the messages

Yudhoyono’s cousin Widodo Wisnu Sayoko testified in a previous hearing that he and Sylvia had met with Sudarto in 2010 to offer assistance for the smooth construction of the project.

Sylvia, however, denied the dossier’s content, although it contains her signature, a sign of her approval with investigators with the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

“No sir. That’s not me sir. Can I see [the dossier]?” Ibu Pur said in response to the prosecutors’ question before approaching the investigators’ desk to see the document during the trial.

While claiming she had nothing to do with the Hambalang project, Sylvia admitted that she was connected to the Youth and Sports Ministry, saying that she visited the ministry twice to ask for a project.

“I was just helping a friend. I just asked whether there was a furniture procurement project at the ministry or not,” she said.

Sylvia was called in as a witness in the trial of Deddy Kusdinar, the former chief of financial and internal affairs at the Youth and Sports Ministry.

The KPK named youth and sports minister Andi Mallarangeng, known to be Yudhoyono’s protégé, and former Democratic Party chairman Anas Urbaningrum, Andi’s political rival for the party chairmanship, as suspects in the case.

During the hearing, the court also summoned Bank Indonesia (BI) Governor Agus Martowardojo, who was Finance Minister between 2010 and 2013.

In his testimony, Agus blamed the ministry’s then director general of budgeting, Anny Ratnawati, who tutored Yudhoyono during doctorate degree studies in 2004, for approving the project despite apparent signs of irregularities. Anny is now deputy finance minister.

According to Agus, Anny’s office sent a note to him stating that it had approved the project’s proposal.

While Agus admitted to eventually approving the project, he argued it was not a blank check for the office to inflate the cost of the project through a multiyear financing. Anny testified last week that Agus had clearly approved the project.

Agus also argued that he did not receive any report from Anny before and after he signed the approval, in spite of the fact that there were numerous irregularities that were apparently sufficient for the ministry to turn it down.

“The first irregularity is that the proposal was not signed by the youth and sports minister, but by the ministry’s secretary, Wafid Muharram. Second, the proposal was not supported with a work plan for a multiyear financing. Third, the technical recommendation for the construction was not signed by the public works minister,” said Agus. (Hans Nicholas Jong)