BNI, BPN officials arrested for graft
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Police arrested over the weekend an employee of the Kota branch of state-owned bank BNI in West Jakarta, an official of the National Land Agency (BPN) and a businessmen for defrauding the bank of Rp 6 billion (US$631,570).
The city police's special crimes unit chief, Sr. Comr. Syahrul Mamma, said on Monday that a public relations officer from BNI's Kota branch, who has been identified only as GY, had conspired with a businessman identified as Masduki and a BPN official identified as JA to forge land title documents to be used as collateral for securing loans from the bank on a number of occasions between 2000 and 2001.
The fake title documents concerned a plot of land located on Jl. Cakung Barat in East Jakarta.
"JA issued the documents, which purportedly showed confirmation by the BPN that Masduki owned the land while GY managed to convince the senior bank officers to extend the loans," Syahrul said.
The three were also helped by a lawyer identified as RE to produce other fake documents.
"We have put him (the lawyer) on our wanted list as he has absconded. Hopefully, we will be able to arrest him soon," Syahrul said.
He explained that around Rp 1 billion in proceeds from the scam went to GY while the remainder was shared by Masduki and JA.
The bank became suspicious when Masduki failed to pay any installments on the loans.
Syahrul said that the bank had tried to trace Masduki but had been unable to do so.
When the bank then attempted to realize the collateral, it found that Masduki was not the real owner.
"They realized that the documents pledged as collateral were fakes. They reported the matter to us in October last year. After several months of investigation, we arrested the three suspects," Syahrul said.
He said the suspects were now being detained at city police headquarters.
All of them had been charged under Articles 2 and 3 of Law No. 31/1999 on corruption, Law No. 20/2001 on corruption, Article 49 of Law No. 10/1998 on the banking industry, and Articles 55 and 56 of Criminal Code. They face maximum cumulative sentences of 20 years in prison each if convicted.
BNI has been hit by a series of graft scandals over the last several years.
Prosecutors in Medan, North Sumatra, arrested three former BNI directors last week for their alleged involvement in a lending scam worth up to Rp 500 billion.
Five BNI officials -- former BNI Pondok Indah branch Mochamad Supedi, branch marketing officers Mukhlis Budianto and Moejibur Rahman, branch appraisal officer Alfonsius Weheb, and BNI's Jakarta region deputy head Noortjahyo Zunoor -- were arrested for their alleged involvement in the Rp 46.5 billion (US$5.17 million) BNI Pondok Indah branch loan scandal.
All of them are now in the custody of Jakarta prosecutors, and are due to go on trial soon.
The most spectacular graft case was the embezzlement of Rp 1.7 trillion of BNI money from the Kebayoran Baru branch in South Jakarta between 2000 and 2002, which involved a number of businesspeople and officials.
Most of the defendants in that case were convicted and jailed by the courts.