BPKP suspects foul play at Agrintara

JAKARTA (JP): Chairman of the Development and Finance Comptroller (BPKP) Soedarjono yesterday accused PTP Agrintara of financial malfeasance.

"Refusing to let us audit the company's financial reports implies that Agrintara may be trying to hide something," he said after a hearing with commission II of the House of Representatives.

Soedarjono said that his agency continues to remind Agrintara, which is wholly owned by the country's 14 state plantation companies, that hiring a public accountancy firm to conduct an audit goes against procedure.

"It is BPKP's responsibility to check and verify state assets, including those owned by Agrintara," he said. "We have to be consistent with regulations," he added.

Agrintara has repeatedly rejected requests from the government's audit agency to audit its financial reports. Instead, the company has appointed accounting firm Prasetio Utomo & Co.

Agrintara's refusal to be audited is partly due to a difference in its perception of the status of state-owned firms.

According to Agrintara, the government's auditing agency is meant to audit companies whose controlling stake is directly owned by the ministry of finance, the nominee shareholder of the government in state-owned companies.

Agrintara also claims that the director general of state companies granted it private company status in 1993 to provide it with broader managerial autonomy and to exempt it from tight procurement procedures.

Soedarjono said that Agrintara's understanding of state-owned company status is wrong.

According to the government's amended regulation on state- owned companies, all firms should be audited by the government's auditors as long as the state, directly or indirectly through state-owned companies, controls at least 51 percent.

He said the regulation applies to all state-owned companies in the country except those which have listed their shares on stock exchanges.

Imperative

The widely published reports about delays in the construction of Agrintara's palm oil plant make the auditing of the company's financial reports even more imperative, Soedarjono said.

According to earlier media reports, Agrintara may have lost billions of rupiah due to delays in the completion of its rubber goods and palm oil refining plants. The Rp 90 billion (US$39.13 million) projects were awarded to two separate contractors, PT Mestika Karunia and PT Kalpataru Semesta. Both companies are controlled by the same shareholders, including Burhanuddin, a close associate of Minister of Agriculture Sjarifudin Baharsjah.

Minister Sjarifudin, who directly oversees state-owned plantation firms, argued that Argintara has the status of a private firm even though the company's shares are owned by state- owned firms.

"The company is a private firm so it has the right to reject the government auditing agency's request to audit its financial reports," the minister said Tuesday.

"Besides, Agrintara's financial reports are being audited by Prasetio Utomo," he said. "The auditing is still in process so it would not be not wise to allow BPKP to enter now," he added. (hen/rid)