200 residents to sue Humpuss Intermoda

JAKARTA (JP): Some 200 residents from Central and East Java intend to sue publicly listed Humpuss Intermoda Transportasi for allegedly misusing their names for the interests of the company's controlling shareholder, former president Soeharto's youngest son Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra.

Koesnadi W. Notonegoro, the lawyer representing the residents, told reporters here on Sunday that he would soon file a lawsuit at a district court in Jakarta after failing to reach an out-of court settlement with Humpuss Intermoda.

Koesnadi said the case surfaced after about 200 residents in Sragen in Central Java and Jember, Mojokerto and Sidoardjo in East Java received dividend payment invoices totaling Rp 750 million (US$100,000) from Humpuss Intermoda on June 25.

"The notification on the dividend payment names each recipient stipulated in the invoice that he or she is entitled to a cash payment commensurate with the sum written on the invoice at appointed branches of state Bank Negara Indonesia 46 (BNI)," Koesnadi recounted.

But when the recipients called at the designated BNI branches they were told the payment invoices were invalid and were administratively incorrect.

Humpuss Intermoda is an international sea carrier of crude oil, liquefied natural gas and petrochemicals. Most of its business is derived from state-owned Pertamina oil and natural gas company.

"On July 13, each of the 200 residents received another letter from Humpuss Intermoda asking them return the dividend payment invoices because there had been an administrative mistake," Koesnadi was quoted by Antara as saying.

The lawyer said that upon investigating, he found that Humpuss Intermoda seemed to have misused the names of the residents, mostly farmers and laborers, for concealing the true size of Tommy's share in the company.

"Tommy misused their names for nominee shareholders apparently to circumvent the rule on the minimum number of individual shareholders in a public company," Koesnadi said.

Tommy's Humpuss officially owns 83.55 percent of the company.

According to Koesnadi, Tommy got the names of the people with assistance from a mutual fund management company which somehow succeeded in collecting photo copies of their identity cards.

He said he had met several times with Humpuss Intermoda's legal advisor Setiono Winardi to negotiate an out-court- settlement of the affair.

"My clients are willing to return the dividend payment invoices and forget the whole thing in return for some compensation for illegally using their names in the company's shareholder composition.

But Setiono declined the offer and insisted that we should settle the case in court," Koesnadi added.

The case has also caused trouble for Bank BNI, he said, claiming that several employees of the BNI Jember branch had been attacked by people.

Humpuss Intermoda president Subroto Purwosutarto could not immediately be reached for comment.