SINGAPORE: Sending Paulus Tannos to Indonesia will be oppressive to him due to the corruption there and because of the time that has passed since his alleged offence, his lawyer said on Tuesday (Jun 24).
Lawyer Bachoo Mohan Singh revealed his 70-year-old client’s argument against being extradited to Indonesia during the second day of the hearing into the matter.
The three-day hearing will be to determine whether Tannos, a Singapore permanent resident wanted in Indonesia for his involvement in a high-profile corruption case, can be surrendered to Indonesia under the Extradition Act and the extradition treaty.
His case is the first under the new extradition treaty between Singapore and Indonesia, which was signed in January 2022 and came into effect in March last year.
The court here will not have to determine Tannos’ guilt in the alleged graft, but it will have to assess if there is enough evidence to prove the elements of the offence in order to approve the extradition to Indonesia.
Arrested in Singapore on Jan 17 this year, Tannos – also known as Tjhin Thian Po – has repeatedly declined to be surrendered to Indonesia, which has stalled extradition proceedings.
A committal hearing for the matter was fixed from Jun 23 to 25.
On the first day of the hearing on Monday, the state counsels and Tannos’s lawyers wrangled over the admissibility of documents, comprising a formal request for extradition and a set of supplementary documents filed earlier this year on separate occasions.
Tannos, represented by Mr Singh from law firm BMS Law, and lawyers Suang Wijaya and Hamza Malik from Eugene Thuraisingam LLC, argued that the supplementary documents should be struck out and the formal request rejected because the evidence was not in compliance with the extradition treaty.
After hearing a response by the state counsels, Deputy Principal District Judge Luke Tan ruled on Tuesday afternoon that the documents were admissible and then admitted all of them into evidence.
Tannos was arrested for his role in a corruption case linked to the Indonesian government’s electronic identity card project that is said to have caused the country about 2.3 trillion rupiah (US$140 million) in losses.
