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.