Executive on probation for Rp 18b bank fraud

JAKARTA (JP): Central Jakarta District Court placed the president of a private company on 10 months probation yesterday for illegally withdrawing Rp 18 billion (US$5.41 million) from HongkongBank.

"The defendant has been put on probation because he did not use the money," presiding judge Pangeran Siregar said.

He said the panel of judges believed that a jail sentence might not change the defendant's behavior or would even worsen it.

The defendant, Hans Wowor, 45, of PT Atrico Utama, attended every session of the four-month trial, he said.

Hans was not detained during the trial proceeding, Siregar said.

The defendant accepted the verdict, but prosecutor M. Yamin was still considering whether to appeal the judge's decision.

Yamin earlier charged Hans under Article 480 of the Criminal Code and asked the court to sentence him to three years and six months in jail.

Siregar said Hans and his accomplice, identified as Henry O. Vendijo who is still at large, had asked HongkongBank to transfer the money to Hans' account at Uni Bank in December 1995.

He said in their operation both the defendant and Vendijo sent fake telexes from Swiss Bank and Bremen Bank to HongkongBank on several occasions, asking the bank to transfer the money to the Uni Bank account.

The defendant was arrested but Vendijo managed to escape, he said.

Vendijo, a Filipino, previously also illegally withdrew about Rp 79 billion from the HongkongBank.

Hans once told the court that he met Vendijo in Singapore, who then agreed to finance the construction of his airport project in Central Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara.

Siregar said yesterday that the project, said to be worth Rp 1 trillion, turned out to be phony and was engineered by the defendant. (jun)