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