Bank Rama denies debtor's allegation

JAKARTA (JP): The President of PT Bank Rama (BR), Putu Antara, said yesterday that the bank's dispute with Pomiaty Srijantono, one of its clients, would not affect its plan to offer 25 million shares to the public in the middle of next month.

Putu told a press conference that all of the allegations made by Pomiaty through the mass media that the bank had embezzled his collateral and inflated her bad debt were not true.

The dispute between the bank and Pomiaty started in 1992 when the North Jakarta district court approved its request to take over Pomiaty's collateral worth Rp 1.3 billion (US$604,930) because she had defaulted on her debts.

Haryono, the bank's lawyer, said that the debtor owed the bank Rp 1.3 billion in debt principal and interest charges.

However, the execution of the district court decision was later postponed by the order of the Chief Justice, Purwoto Gandasubrata, while Pomiaty made an appeal against the verdict to the Jakarta High Court.

Pomiaty later made an appeal to the Supreme Court after the High Court decided to uphold the North Jakarta District Court's decision.

The bank is still waiting for the Supreme Court's decision on the approval.

Pomiaty told The Jakarta Post by telephone yesterday that she did have some debts at the bank but she denied that the amount was as large as claimed by the bank.

She said the bank had overcharged her with an unusually high interest rate.

Frank Taira Supit, the president of PT Sigma Batara, the bank's lead underwriter for its planned share offering in June, said yesterday that the civil suit had been disclosed in the bank's report to the Capital Market Supervisory Agency (Bapepam) when it submitted an application for the share issue.

Frank said the loan involved in the civil suit was less than one percent of the bank's total assets of Rp 420 billion as of last year. (03)