Graft suspect Nunun, now in Cambodia, eludes KPK hunt

Welcome to Cambodia, the place for all crooks to get pampering.  Nunun Nurbaeti has found her big brother Hun Crook Sen.  Buying the vote had always been tradition his CPP.

Nunun Nurbaeti, a graft fugitive her family claimed suffered from “severe forgetfulness”, seems to have kept one step ahead of Indonesia’s anticorruption body.

Law and Human Rights Minister Patrialis Akbar told reporters on Monday that Nunun was no longer in Thailand as reported earlier by several media outlets.

“According to the immigration office report, she’s not in Thailand anymore but in Phnom Penh [Cambodia],” the minister said, adding that Nunun traveled from Thailand to Cambodia two months before his ministry revoked her passport on the request of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

Last month, the commission announced it had named Nunun a suspect in the high-profile bribery case centering on the 2004 election of Miranda S. Goeltom as the central bank’s senior deputy governor by the House of Representatives.

Nunun is accused of distributing traveler’s checks to legislators to buy votes for Miranda. This case has implicated 25 politicians from the country’s major parties, including the Golkar Party — a gadfly in the ruling coalition — and the opposition Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

Nunun, however, fled to Singapore when the graft scandal arose last year. She ignored the KPK’s subpoena, saying she suffered from acute amnesia and needed medication in the neighboring country.

She was reportedly apprehended by the Thai authorities after failing to show a valid passport when she was about to leave the country last week. The KPK later sent a team to the neighboring country to coordinate her extradition.

The Indonesian Embassy in Bangkok has filed an extradition request to the Thai Foreign Ministry. But the effort was two months late.

Patrialis said Nunun left Thailand for Cambodia on March 21, while her passport was revoked on May 27.

Bambang Irawan, the director general of immigration at the ministry, confirmed Nunun had fled to Phnom Penh. “We received the information from our counterpart in Bangkok early this month that Nunun was recorded to have left for Phnom Penh,” he said.

Bambang said his directorate had cooperated with the related institutions to bring Nunun home to face questioning. But the fact that she is currently in Cambodia has made it more difficult for the law enforcers to extradite her.

Indonesia does not have an extradition treaty with Cambodia. The KPK was hoping to nab her in Thailand because Jakarta and Bangkok have signed such a treaty. “We have coordinated with the Foreign Ministry and our representative offices abroad, including in Cambodia,” Bambang said.

“Once we know where she is, we will cooperate with our representative offices and issue a travel permit for her to come home.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Michael Tene declined to comment further on the development of Nunun’s case. “One thing for sure is that we always cooperate with all government and law enforcement institutions,” he said.

As of Monday, the KPK still did not know where Nunun had been hiding.

KPK spokesman Johan Budi said the commission had no information on Nunun being in Cambodia. “I learned of this from media reports,” he said. (rcf)