Former Supreme Court official arrested for bribery in connection with murder acquittal in Surabaya – Politics

Investigators from the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) have arrested a former senior Supreme Court official as a suspect in a bribery case related to the acquittal of a lawmaker’s son in a high-profile murder case in Surabaya, East Java, last year.

On Friday, investigators named Zarof Ricar, former head of the Supreme Court’s Law and Justice Research and Development Agency, as a suspect in the case after his arrest in Bali on Thursday evening. Zarof will retire from the Supreme Court in 2022.

Zarof is suspected of accepting bribes from Lisa Rahmat, a lawyer representing defendant Gregorius Ronald Tannur in a murder case, in exchange for a Supreme Court ruling in favor of her client in the case.

“Lisa asked Zarof that the Supreme Court judges uphold the lower court’s ruling that cleared Ronald of all charges,” Abdul Qohar, director of investigations in the office of the deputy attorney general for extraordinary crimes, said at a news conference in Jakarta on Friday evening.

He added that the lawyer would pay Zohar 1 billion rupees ($63,714) and an additional 5 billion rupees that would be given to judges hearing the appeal. As requested by the retired judge, Lisa transferred the foreign currency money worth 5 billion rupiah, who then kept it in a safe at her home in Jakarta.

Read also: Supreme Court suspends judges arrested in connection with acquittal of murder in Surabaya

In addition to the Ronald case, the AGO also suspected Zarof of accepting bribes in other cases while serving as a Supreme Court judge from 2012 to 2022. Over a 10-year period, he allegedly accepted gratuities amounting to 920 billion Indian rupees and approximately 51 kilograms of gold.

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