Court urged to continue fraud case

Court urged to continue fraud case

JAKARTA (JP): State prosecutors urged the Central Jakarta
District court yesterday to continue trying two men accused of
defrauding Bank Indonesia.

Prosecutors Soejitno and Tony Spontana told the court to
reject the defense lawyers' objections last week which said the
indictment failed to support their accusations with details, it
contained contradictory inaccuracies and the investigation had
not been carried out by the right body.

"The indictment goes into detail on how, where and when the
defendants were involved in the case," prosecutor Tony said.

Standing trial are Naman Kawi, head of the cashiers section of
the central bank, and businessman Andi Muis. They are among five
men charged with defrauding the bank of Rp 7 billion (US$2.9
million).

The defense lawyers had said the presentation of evidence was
complicated by the different degrees of seriousness of the
charges but Tony said, "we followed the standard and widely used
procedures".

"Naman and Andi are primarily accused of violating the same
article of the Penal Code, but each has also been charged with
lesser offenses for breaching other articles," he said.

The defense lawyers' had also objected to the indictment's
inaccuracies in the sums of the alleged payouts. But prosecutor
Soejitno said, "If we read it thoroughly, we do not need to argue
about the inaccurate figures. They are only a typing error."

He told the court it was not against the law for the police to
have carried out the investigation instead of the attorney
general's office. "In fact, later on the investigation was
continued by the attorney general's office," he said.

The prosecutors said they felt they only needed to answer some
of the lawyers' objections because the rest would be proved in
the trial.

The trial was postponed until next week. (13)