The man at the center of Indonesia’s most closely watched corruption scandal was sentenced yesterday to seven years in jail for pocketing millions of US dollars from big companies so they could avoid paying taxes.
Gayus Tambunan’s trial has made headlines and dominated social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook for months.
That’s because — in addition to embezzling at least US$2.7 million, a relatively small sum in a nation considered one of the world’s most graft-ridden — the web of involvement allegedly included everyone from senior police and immigration officials to warden chiefs and judges.
More spectacularly, authorities revealed that Tambunan had allegedly bribed his way out of prison at least 68 times from the time of his arrest almost one year ago.
He was captured on camera at a tennis match on the resort island of Bali in November last year, clumsily disguised in a black wig and sunglasses, and has since been accused of paying more than US$100,000 for fake passports so he could gamble in Macau and shop in Singapore.
“The defendant has been found guilty of corruption ... and of giving false information about the amount of money he amassed,” said Albertine Ho, presiding judge of the South Jakarta District Court, in a verdict read out live on all major television and radio stations.
Ho gave him seven years behind bars and slapped him with a fine of US$30,000 — a sentence that was sure to spark public outcry.
Prosecutors had been demanding 20 years.
Tambunan, who earned just US$1,300 a month as a mid-level tax official, admitted during his trial to taking bribes from more than a dozen big companies.
However, he insisted all the attention showered on him was unfair.
“I’m just a little fish,” he said in his defense plea, adding that prosecutors, generals and high-ranking tax officials, whom he singled out by name in the courtroom, were much more deeply involved.
“What about them?” he said he was pleased with yesterday’s ruling.
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Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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