Drawn-out court proceedings

My company was legally appointed in 1994 as the sole agent in Indonesia of German firm Eickhorn to import and sell commando- type combat knives from Solingen, Germany, to an Indonesian state institution as the authorized end-user. A number of orders were successfully completed and payments were remitted to Germany.

However, the commissions agreed upon as per contract have never been paid. Instead fake credit notes were issued. Repeated pleas have not yielded any results, which led us to take the dispute to a court of law in Wuppertal, German. During the many court sessions since 1996, we have submitted various pieces of evidence that support our right to the commissions. We went as far as to ask the court to allow our side to provide expert witnesses, but our request was rejected. Eickhorn, on the other hand, was allowed by the German court to present expert witnesses.

The case has been ongoing for about eight years without a verdict being issued. In April 2004, the presiding judge issued a summons for both parties to appear before the court on July 1. However, on June 29, we learned that the hearing had been postponed until December 2004 on the grounds that the presiding judge had retired.

We were perplexed by this sudden postponement, but waited in good faith for the December hearing.

We were recently advised by our lawyer that another German company had filed a bankruptcy petition against Eickhorn and our hearing had subsequently been canceled. When this happened, our lawyer initially said he would file a claim in the insolvency proceedings, but has since withdrawn from the case, leaving us absolutely no hope at this late stage.

Eight years for such an injustice to be rectified is a long time indeed, but the fact that it is unlikely to be rectified at all could have disastrous repercussions on business relations between our two countries.

It is our hope that there is some way in which the German Embassy, or the German-Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (EKONID), can help in facilitating a final and just settlement to our payment claim from Eickhorn.

HERLINA, Jakarta