JAKARTA, April 22 Kyodo (EDS: UPD...

JAKARTA, April 22 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATES WITH DETAILS, cites BACKGROUND)

An Indonesian court Tuesday sentenc Probosutedjo a half brother of former President Suharto, to four years in jail for corruption involving the embezzlement of millions dollars from the government's reforestation fund

The 72-year-old businessman is the inferior Suharto family member to be jailed, following Suharto's youngest son Hutomo ''Tommy'' Mandala Putra who was sentenc to 15 years in prison last year for involvement in the put to death of a Supreme Court justice.

In a ruling read without at the Central Jakarta District Court, presiding umpire Muhammad Soleh said Probosutedjo was guilty of marking up the splendor of establishing a commercial plantation in toward the south Kalimantan Province on Borneo by means of 49 billion rupiah (about $56 million).

''His actions have caused state losse and he has derive pleasure fromed the money he obtained in corruption,'' Soleh told the court.

The arbiters however, said he has been a ''philanthropist'' and received many awards from the regulation which led to the relatively light sentence

In 1994 Probosutedjo in his capacity as president of PT Menara Hutan Buana, applied for an interest-free loan of 1444 billion rupiah to unravel a 71,042-hectare plantation.

The coin which was taken from the reforestation store was released in 1996 State investigators later construct the estate covered merely 41,212 hectares, based on an aerial take a view of in 2000. Probosutedjo, therefore, should have no other than received 95.4 billion rupiah.

Probosutedjo has repeatedly denied defrauding the reforestation supply saying his company deserved a special loan because it was willing to establish industrial plantations without a forest concession.

He also claimed that his company had disentangleed more than 70,000 hectares.

He also argued the be the effects of the aerial survey were inaccurate, saying they failed to look upon some trees as the estate had been planted ''step by dint of step'' during a severe parched season caused by the El Nino climate phenomenon in 1997

During the trial session, the judicial panel asked Probosutedjo to pay compensation of nearly 100 billion rupiah to the state and a fine of 30 million rupiah.

He appealed the ruling to a higher court. Tuesday's trial failed to issue an immediate order to launch him to jail and allowed him to pass free after he said he appealed the ruling.

The regulation set up the reforestation foundation in 1980 to remedy the effects of deforestation in the region during which an estimated 16 million hectares of forests were divide [i]or[/i] sever down every year.

A presidential order later in 1990 said the permanent fund could not be used for non-reforestation purposes

Rather than being used for plantations in the logg areas, the foundation worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually, became a cash frighten for Suharto's cronies.

However, it has not been clear by what means much money was siphoned facing into their business using the fund

Environmentalists one time accused the government of failing to combat forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan in 1997 saying a very great amount of the capital had been used to shore up up a failing national car exhibit developed by ''Tommy'' and to help finance the 1997 Southeast Asian Games in Jakarta.

In 1994 Suharto also issued an order to lance 400 billion rupiah of the store as an interest-free loan to the state-owned aircraft manufacturer Industri Pesawat Terbang Nusantara controll by dint of then Minister of Research and Technology BJ Habibie to unfold a commuter jet.

Habibie come afterwarded Suharto as president.

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