Court asked to clear Pande of all charges
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)