Jakarta - Anti-graft prosecutors on Monday called for a five-year prison term for an Indonesian businesswoman charged with paying a 660,000-dollar bribe to a former top prosecutor to drop a major embezzlement case. 

Chief prosecutor Sarjono Turin told the court that Artalyta Suryani committed a criminal act of corruption for paying a bribe to a senior prosecutor at Indonesia's attorney general's office. 

Suryani is charged with anti-corruption laws for paying a 660,000-dollar bribe to Urip Tri Gunawan to drop a probe into Syamsul Nursalim, one of Indonesia's richest men, who is accused on embezzling 3 billion dollars in emergency bail-out loans to his bank during the Asian crisis in 1998. 

Prosecutors also urged the court to order Suryani to pay a fine of 250 million rupiah (27,100 dollars) fine. 

Gunawan, who is also being tried separately on charges of accepting bribes, had led the investigation into alleged misuse of Bank Indonesia's liquidity fund by a former bank owned by Nursalim. 

If found guilty for corruption, Gunawan could face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. 

Gunawan is one of several prosecutors whose secretly taped conversations about the investigations have been played during the trial of Suryani. 

Officials from the Corruption Eradication Commission said they caught Gunawan carrying a large amount of cash after a meeting with Suryani, a friend of the Nursalim family, in March - one week after he had called off the investigation. 

Both Suryani and Gunawan have denied the bribery charges, claiming the money was linked with a business. 

During President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration, several high-ranking officials ranging from a former religious affairs minister to a former governor of Aceh province have been jailed, although critics say that some of the worst cases of graft have yet to be tackled. (dpa)