Adrian 'got $4.6m from Gramarindo'
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Prosecutors will finalize next week the indictment on Adrian Waworuntu, a key suspect in a Rp 1.7 trillion (US$185 million) fraud involving state bank BNI, based on evidence that he had received $4.6 million of the money from Gramarindo Group.
Assistant Chief Prosecutor for Special Crimes at the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office Marwan Effendy said on Sunday that Adrian was the consultant for the Gramarindo, a group that had used fictitious letters of credit to embezzle BNI money. Adrian is also accused of giving a personal guarantee for the credit.
"Adrian cannot deny that he had received $4.6 million from Gramarindo as we obtained a document saying he signed a credit guarantee document submitted by Gramarindo to get the money. All the evidence will be used to indict Adrian," Marwan told The Jakarta Post.
Based on the evidence, Adrian will be charged under the anti- money laundering law as he had received money from criminal activities, and under the law on corruption because he had allegedly helped Gramarindo embezzle state money.
Adrian was taken into custody by the police on Friday after one month in hiding.
He, together with another key suspect Maria Pauline Lumowa, the owner of Gramarindo, and several directors of the Petindo Group, which worked together in issuing the fictitious letters of credit, are accused of defrauding the country's second largest bank in 2003. They used letters of credit from correspondent banks in Congo and Kenya to withdraw money from BNI's Kebayoran Baru branch.
The crime caused the state bank to suffer Rp 1.7 trillion in losses, only Rp 1 billion of which has been recovered.
Police have named 17 suspects from BNI, Gramarindo and Petindo. Nine of them have been convicted by the South Jakarta Court to between 8 to 15 years in prison, while former BNI executive Edi Santoso received a life sentence.
However, Maria remains at large. She fled the country before the police went public about the scam in December 2003.
Marwan said the prosecutors had a strong case against Adrian following their success in bringing other suspects to justice.
"We will be very careful in drafting the indictment so as not to let Adrian walk free. We are sure we will be able to send him to jail as we have done with nine other suspects," he said.
Adrian said in an exclusive interview with RCTI, while on the run in Singapore that he was innocent and claimed that he was a victim of political intervention by President Megawati Soekarnoputri's regime.
He did not elaborate on his statement about political intervention, but the BNI case did have some political undertones after Edi Santoso, the former BNI Kebayoran branch's foreign transaction manager, distributed a letter to the press on Nov. 18, 2003 saying he had met with Gen. (ret) Wiranto, at the time one of the Golkar Party's presidential aspirants, twice in the course of disbursing the funds.
Wiranto subsequently denied the content of the letter, and said he did not recognize Edi nor any other suspects in the scandal. Later Edi withdrew his statement after Wiranto filed a lawsuit against him.