Court asked to clear Pande of all charges

JAKARTA (JP): A defense lawyer has asked the South Jakarta District court to declare former deputy chairman of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) Pande Lubis not guilty and acquit his client of all corruption charges.

Asfifuddin, chief of Pande's defense lawyers, told the court on Thursday that his client had never benefited from the disbursement of Rp 904 billion ($108.9 million) of IBRA funds to Bank Bali.

"So, the prosecutors' argument that our client violated the laws was not true," he told the hearing, presided over by judge I.D.G. Putra Yadnya.

Earlier, chief prosecutor Tarwo Hadi Sadjuri asked the court to sentence Pande to four years in jail for playing a key role in the disbursement of the IBRA funds.

Tarwo said Pande had violated Article 1 of the 1971 anti- corruption law on enriching oneself at the expense of the state. He also accused the defendant of having conspired with others to commit a crime.

"The defendant acted beyond his authority," Tarwo said, referring to an agreement between IBRA and Bank Indonesia (BI), in March 1998.

Asfifuddin rejected the prosecutor's accusation, which was based on the IBRA-BI agreement.

"Such an agreement and a decree of the Minister of Finance are structurally lower than Presidential Decree No. 26/1998, which stipulates that the government guarantees banks' obligations to customers and creditors.

Pande was blamed for neglecting the procedures stipulated in the agreement, which requires IBRA to verify Bank BDNI's viability as a requirement before the Agency disbursed the funds to Bank Bali.

Earlier, Bank Indonesia and the Ministry of Finance had rejected IBRA's request to disburse the funds to Bank Bali.

Asfifuddin said that the disbursement to Bank Bali had been made in accordance with proper procedures and regulations on bank guarantee payments.

He defended that his client had verified BDNI's viability, but admitted that the verification did not go as expected because BDNI's main office had moved to another location.

"So, to verify the truth of the transactions, IBRA initiated a meeting of 'reconciliation' in April 1999," Asfifuddin said.

He said Pande's initiatives to hold the "reconciliatory" meeting, whose results were then used as the justification for the disbursement of IBRA's funds to Bank Bali, had been endorsed by Glen M. Yusuf, then IBRA chief.

Pande said in a previous hearing that he considered the reconciliation between BDNI and Bank Bali as verification.

The money paid out was for a loan that bank BDNI owed to Bank Bali but was unable to repay at the time it was taken over by IBRA, a government agency.

Later, it became apparent that Rp 546 billion of the money had gone to PT Era Giat Prima (EGP) as a commission for securing repayment of the loan.

The case immediately gained notoriety when it was learned that PT EGP was owned by people, allegedly closely connected to the Golkar party, and that the funds were reportedly used for the reelection campaign of then president B.J. Habibie.

Judge Putra Yadnya adjourned the trial until next week to hear the prosecutor's statement. (01)