Calls rise for dismissal of BNI directors
Calls rise for dismissal of BNI directors
Damar Harsanto and Dadan Wijaksana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Calls intensified on Friday for the board of directors of Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) to be held responsible for the recent loan scam, with lawmakers being the latest to urge their dismissal.
The calls emerged during a closed-door hearing between the state-owned bank's top executives and lawmakers from the House of Representatives subcommission overseeing banking affairs, said Anthony Zedra Abidin, who presided over the hearing.
"They gave disappointing answers to our questions. We feel that they were irresponsible, tending to shift the responsibility to the bank's Kebayoran Baru branch, where the fraud took place.
"We have asked them explicitly to resign, because the scam exposes a disastrous weakness in BNI's internal control," Anthony told reporters, adding that the recommendation for dismissal would be submitted soon to the State Minister for State Enterprises Laksamana Sukardi after first securing unanimous approval from the subcommission.
Legislators grilled BNI's board of directors for over three hours in regards the much-publicized Rp 1.7 trillion (US$201.18 million) lending scam.
Anthony added, "Although the (BNI) president admitted that he felt guilty, ashamed and so on because of the scam, that's not enough -- where does the responsibility lie?"
The scandal concerns the publicly listed bank's failure to conduct a proper credit appraisal before allowing its Kebayoran Baru branch to disburse export credits to a number of local companies. The companies claimed to be exporting select commodities to the Congo and Kenya in Africa.
The companies, identified by BNI as the Petindo Group and the Gramarindo Group, used as collateral letters of credit guaranteed by banks in Kenya, Switzerland and the Cook Islands.
The credits were valued at Rp 1.7 trillion and disbursed from December 2002 to July 2003. However, it was later discovered that the export activities had never materialized.
BNI president Saifuddien Hasan said on Thursday that the debtors had tampered with the documents and had colluded with certain BNI officials to obtain the loans.
Analysts have said that the bank should have smelled something awry before the disbursements, as the foreign banks in the letters of credit were not BNI correspondent banks. They also demanded that the bank's top officials, instead of personnel in the Kebayoran Baru branch, be held responsible, as such a large amount of credits could never have been disbursed without approval from the bank's headquarters.
Earlier reports said an extraordinary shareholders meeting is scheduled for December, when one of the items on the agenda might be the sacking of several BNI directors.
In the latest developments, police said on Friday they had detained Jeffrey Basso, director of Gramarindo subsidiary PT Sri Ranu Caraka Pasifik. Three people have now been arrested in connection with the case.
Earlier this month, police detained Edy Santoso, head of the foreign customer service division of BNI Kebayoran Baru in South Jakarta, and Koesadiyono, head of BNI Kebayoran Baru.
"There are still eight other suspects on the loose," said Brig. Gen. Samuel Ismoko, National Police detectives chief of financial crimes, hinting that some of them had fled abroad.
The Police have named Maria Pauline Lumowa and Adrian Waworuntu, owners of Gramarindo, as suspects, while the others were identified only by their initials: AW of PT PK, TP of PT BRP, APL of PT MUEI, JB of PT BM, RK of PT MT and AP of PT FM.