Bambang Sutrisno clarifies
Bambang Sutrisno clarifies
As attorneys and legal advisers to Bambang Sutrisno, we hereby
issue a statement to clarify recent remarks by the spokesman of
the Attorney General's Office (AGO) about Bambang residing
overseas, the now defunct Bank Surya, emergency liquidity credit
(BLBI) from Bank Indonesia:
1. Bambang never fled overseas to avoid criminal charges related
to the extension of BLBI to Bank Surya, as implied by the AGO
spokesman. Bambang left Indonesia on July 19, 1997 for Singapore
to negotiate international loan syndications and has since
resided overseas even before Bank Surya obtained BLBI from the
central Bank and was eventually closed down.
2. Bambang had quit Bank Surya and sold all his shares in the
bank to his then business partner, Sudwikatmono, under a
memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed by both parties on Sept.
8, 1997. Under this MoU Bambang ceded all his interests in the
Golden Truly Group and all its subsidiaries, including Bank
Surya, to Sudwikatmono, who in turn was obliged to pay Bambang
US$10 million. But Sudwikatmono has not yet paid the $10 million
to Bambang.
Therefore, by the time then Bank Surya got BLBI from Bank
Indonesia in December, 1997, Bambang was no longer related in
anyway to Bank Surya and had nothing to do with the BLBI. It was
Sudwikatmono, then the chief commissioner and Kiki Ariawan, then
president director of Bank Surya, who signed all the documents
related to the BLBI from Bank Indonesia.
3. The then deputy attorney general for intelligence Syamsu D, on
behalf of the attorney general, issued a decree on Feb. 15, 1999
that effectively lifted a travel ban on Bambang. This decree was
issued on the basis of official memos from the then deputy
attorney general for special crimes and on the results of
interviews made by an AGO official with Bambang in Singapore on
Jan. 12, 1999.
Therefore, the AGO decision to slap another travel ban on
Bambang on June 22, 2001, is unfair and groundless.
4. The AGO plan to try Bambang in absentia on criminal charges
related to the BLBI to the defunct Bank Surya is not only
groundless in the absence of any legal evidence but is also void
because Bambang, until Aug. 28, 2001, has not received any
summons from the AGO either through the Indonesian Embassy in
Singapore or through his lawyers in Jakarta.
We therefore deplore the misleading remarks by the AGO
spokesman and suspect malicious intent in the issuance of such
false information on Bambang.
R. DWIYANTO PRIHARTONO
Team Coordinator
Prihartono & Partners
Attorneys and Counsellors of law
Jakarta