Arresting corruptors legally plausible

Arresting corruptors legally plausible

Bambang Nurbianto and Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A call to arrest bad debtors and seized their wealth was
justified by a legal expert who said on Friday that such a move
could be pursued through commercial courts combined with the
Gijzeling (hostage) mechanism.

Pradjoto, a noted corporate lawyer, said on Friday that the
Supreme Court (MA) had issued a decree stipulating that a
colonial Gijzeling law could be used on former bank owners who
had failed to repay their loans to the government, in order to
force them to fulfill their debts.

"This process is, I think, the only way to force the debtors
to own up to their responsibility," Pradjoto told The Jakarta
Post on Friday.

Pradjoto explained that the commercial court would declare
those debtors who could not pay their loans as approaching
bankruptcy, after which the court could order the seizing of
their wealth.

The Gijzeling law would be used as the legal basis to arrest
the debtors while the legal process at the commercial court was
underway, he added.

The former bank owners received about Rp 114.5 trillion
(US$12.7 billion) in liquidity loans from the central bank to
save their ailing banks from bankruptcy after the 1997 economic
crisis.

However, many of them misused the loans, as they used the
money to finance their own businesses and returned only a small
portion of their debt. Worse still, these debts were subsumed
into the domestic debt and became the burden of the people.

Calls for the government to seize the assets of bad debtors
have been mounting recently, mainly due to the unpopular triple
price hikes, which the people said were unreasonable and unfair.

Chairman Hasyim Muzadi of the largest Islamic organization
Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) urged the government, during a meeting with
President Megawati Soekarnoputri at Merdeka Palace on Thursday,
to arrest bad debtors and to confiscate their wealth.

Todung Mulya Lubis, another noted commercial lawyer, also
agreed with Hasyim's call, but he suggested another way: Filing
criminal charges against these debtors.

Todung said that Hasyim's statement should not cause
controversy, as the religious leader had only emphasized the
public's demand for the government to not exonerate big debtors
from criminal charges.

He said anyone who committed a crime could not be exempt from
criminal charges, even with the issuance of the release and
discharge policy.

"If the people commit a crime, its criminal case would never
be excluded even though its civil case had been settled," he
added.

Todung, however, warned that good debtors who were really
cooperative should not be prosecuted, but be given an opportunity
to return their debts.

"This treatment should only be given to those who are really
cooperative and have returned at least 80 percent of their debts,
while the rest of their debts could be paid in stages," said
Todung.

All of these suggested moves, however, would only be affective
if the court system was relatively clean and credible. In the
current situation, any legal move against debtors would not be
effective, Pradjoto said.

He therefore suggested that the government -- if it had really
heard the demands of its people and had the political nerve and
will -- establish an ad hoc court to force debtors to pay up
their debts.