AGO approves case file against Adrian
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
The Attorney General's Office has approved the case file of Adrian Waworuntu, the main suspect in the Rp 1.7 trillion (US$184.7 million) scam involving state bank BNI, moving prosecutors closer to bringing him to justice.
The office's spokesman Kemas Yahya Rahman said the Jakarta prosecutor's office was now expecting the police to transfer the custody of Adrian and all evidence of his involvement in the case to enable prosecutors to prepare the indictment.
"In our letter dated Sept. 9 to National Police Headquarters, we declared Adrian's case file was complete. It's now up to the police as to when they hand Adrian over to us," Kemas told The Jakarta Post.
Prosecutors had previously rejected Adrian's case six times for zeroing in on money laundering allegations but failing to incriminate him on charges of corruption.
National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar once said he had offered the case to the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) to handle.
According to the law on the KPK, the antigraft body has the authority to take over cases from the police or the prosecutor's office if both institutions cease their investigations or hand the case voluntarily over to the KPK.
Kemas said Adrian would be charged with corruption, money laundering and embezzlement. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to life imprisonment.
"As soon as we receive Adrian and the evidence, we will prepare the indictment and subsequently bring the case to court," said Kemas.
It usually takes the police two weeks to transfer a suspect to prosecutors.
Case files of several other suspects, such as the Baso brothers -- Jeffry and Judi -- are in the process of being completed.
Another suspect in the case, Maria Pauline Lumowa -- the owner of the Gramarindo Group -- has fled abroad.
Police have named 15 suspects in the case. Two of them -- Koesadiyuwono and Edi Santoso from BNI's Kebayoran Baru branch -- have been convicted and received sentences of 15 years in prison and life respectively. Others are now standing trial at the South Jakarta Court.
Several businesspeople from Gramarindo and Petindo Groups were accused of stealing money from the country's second largest bank in 2002 to 2003 by using fake letters of credit from correspondent banks in Congo and Kenya to withdraw money from BNI's Kebayoran Baru branch. The bank managed to recover Rp 400 billion of the money swindled.
Aside from their failure to gather evidence to implicate the main suspects, the police and prosecutors have come under fire for failing to recover the assets of the state bank.
BNI's management and lawyers have repeatedly said that only Rp 1 billion out of Rp 1.3 trillion of state losses had been returned to the bank, despite the police's announcement that they had confiscated assets worth over Rp 200 billion.