Tycoon Hary Tanoe Denies Threatening AGO Investigator Amid Tax Fraud Probe
Jakarta. Business tycoon Hary Tanoesoedibjo denied threatening an Attorney General's Office investigator working on a tax fraud case that allegedly implicated him, as he attended police questioning on Monday (12/06).
The questioning came more than a year after investigator Yulianto filed a report with the National Police against Hary, chief exectuive of MNC Group and chairman of the United Indonesian Party (Perindo).
Yulianto accused Hary of threatening him via text messages amid an AGO investigation into a fraud case involving Rp 10.75 billion ($809,000) of tax restitution made in 2009 to a telecommunication firm, Mobile-8.
The AGO alleged that the case implicated Hary, then commissioner of Mobile-8 that was part of MNC Group.
Hary dismissed the allegations upon arrival at the National Police headquarters and said he never meant to threaten Yulianto with the text messages.
"My messages were clearly not threatening," he told reporters, referring to a conclusion by a House of Representatives working committee formed earlier this year to investigate the Mobile-8 case.
Hary's text messages read, "You have to remember that your power will not last forever."
"One of the reasons I entered politics was to stamp out law enforcers like you, who abuse your powers wantonly or for transactional purposes," he said.
"They were about eradicating corruption. My messages were to affirm that I entered politics for good objectives. They contained no threats," Hary said on Monday.
He said his text messages were only to remind Yulianto to be "careful" in investigating the Mobile-8 case. "I had to react. If not, I would have been defamed."
Hary added that the messages to Yulianto would have been considered threatening if they read, "If I am [in] the government, I will kill you."
Hary insisted that he had nothing to do with the Mobile-8 case. The network provider of postpaid service Fren allegedly created a series of fictitious equipment purchases from provider Djaja Nusantara Komunikasi between 2007 and 2009 to obtain a refund.
"I knew nothing. I had no connections at all. Why did they mention my name?" Hary said.
"I had no capacity to intervene. If I were a public official, I would have had the power to intervene. This would have led to abuse of power. But who am I? An ordinary [person], just like you all."
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