Ex-bank owners agree to surrender more assets
JAKARTA (JP): Three former bank owners agreed on Wednesday to surrender additional assets and provide personal guarantees to the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) to repay their debts to the government.
Attorney General Marzuki Darusman said the ex-bank owners, Anthony Salim, Bob Hasan and Sjamsul Nursalim, submitted lists of the additional assets they would surrender.
"They have principally agreed to pledge more assets and provide personal guarantees," Marzuki said following a meeting of the Financial Sector Policy Committee (FSPC).
He said IBRA would study the assets and decide whether they were sufficient to cover the obligations of the former bank owners.
"For the time being, the ex-bank owners are being cooperative," he said.
Anthony is the owner of the Salim Group, which formerly controlled Bank Central Asia (BCA). Sjamsul owns the Gadjah Tunggal Group, which owned the now defunct Bank BDNI, and Hasan was the co-owner of the now defunct Bank BUN.
FSPC, which groups senior economic ministers and the attorney general, earlier gave the former bank owners until Wednesday evening to agree to surrender additional assets and provide personal guarantees or risk legal sanction.
The committee decides key transaction made by IBRA.
A government source, however, said FSPC initially expected the ex-bank owners to attend the meeting personally, but instead they only sent a letter to the committee.
The source said that since the letter did not have a strong legal basis, the ex-bank owners had been told to come to the office of the coordinating minister for the economy on Friday to sign a legally binding document.
The former bank owners, who are among the country's top business tycoons, owe hundreds of trillions of rupiah to the government after their banks received massive liquidity support between 1998 and 1999, during the height of the country's financial crisis. The banks also violated the legal lending limit by channeling most of their money to affiliated business groups.
The tycoons signed the Master of Settlement and Acquisition Agreement (MSAA) in 1999 with IBRA, under which they pledged assets to repay their debts to the government.
But the pledged assets were not sufficient to cover the debts. Former chief economic minister Kwik Kian Gie was the first to demand the MSAA be revised.
The Salim Group, for example, owes the government approximately Rp 53 trillion, but the assets it surrendered were valued at about Rp 20 trillion.
Following a Cabinet reshuffle, the new economic team demanded the former bank owners surrender additional assets and provide personal guarantees that they would make good on their debts.
But the business groups initially attempted to resist these new demands by lobbying government officials and legislators.
"They think there are government officials that can be bought," Coordinating Minister for the Economy Rizal Ramli said recently.
Rizal said the Attorney General's Office had conducted an investigation and found that the conglomerates still owned numerous assets both in Indonesia and overseas.
In addition to the three ex-bank owners, businessman Sudwikatmono also signed the MSAA agreement.
But Marzuki said Sudwikatmono, the brother-in-law of former president Soeharto, was not among the ex-bank owners who had been given the Wednesday deadline to pledge additional assets.
"The government is currently focusing on the three conglomerates," Marzuki said.
A government source said Sudwikatmono was not included with the three other ex-bank owners because his bank had not violated the legal lending limit. (rei)