Court verdicts obstruct the law

We are the representative lawyers of a Bank, acting as the plaintiff.

There are three verdicts of the South Jakarta District Court which make us very disappointed.

First, the Court issued a verdict in favor of a third party who was not a party involved in a case. Supreme Court jurisprudence states that a judgment only has an implication for the parties concerned.

This is the summary of the case: where A is the Bank creditor and B is the debtor company. The latter never paid their debt. C is the company which is not party to the case.

In the credit agreement it is stipulated that, for as long as the credit agreement is valid, the debtor is not allowed to lend the money to any other party without first obtaining written permission from the creditor.

In court, B (debtor) made an admission to the effect that money had been lent to a third party (C) without the creditor's approval. The court then ruled that B is exempted from paying A because B lent the money to C. How illogical!

The second and third verdicts relate to the following. A is a Bank creditor, while E and F are debtors. When we summoned the debtors they replied that the credit is a swap loan and had been settled by the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA). When we confirmed these details with IBRA, they replied that no swap loan existed in this case, and we were authorized to collect the money from the debtors.

Based on IBRA's letter we decided to file a lawsuit against the debtor via the District Court.

At the conclusion of proceedings I stressed to the presiding judges that a swap loan had never existed in this case, which the judges asked the Registrar to note in the transcript of the proceedings.

In the end the South Jakarta District Court rejected our claim, insisting that the legal basis for their decision was the swap loan.

The Court's judgments have only served to obstruct the law.

TUMBUR SIMBOLON

Legal Consultant

Jakarta