Files on one BNI suspect accepted, rest rejected: Police
P.C. Naommy, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The police's role in handling the BNI scam would appear to be wanting after the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office accepted on Tuesday the case file on one of the suspects in the scam, but rejected the files of another three suspects due to lack of evidence.
Marwan Effendi, the assistant for special crimes to the chief of the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office, told The Jakarta Post that his office had accepted the file on John Hamenda as the police had managed to link him with another suspect, Edy Santosa, formerly BNI's foreign customer division head.
It is now up to the court to set a date for Hameda's trial.
Marwan said Hamenda, a director of PT Petindo, a subsidiary of the Gramarindo Group, would be charged under Law No. 31/1999 on corruption and Law No. 15/2002 on money laundering.
However, Marwan said the files on Rudi Sutopo, Haris Is Hartono and Nurcahyo had been rejected by the prosecutors as, in the opinion of the prosecutors, they were not backed up by convincing evidence
Nurcahyo is a former deputy head of BNI's Region X, while Haris Is Hartono and Rudi Sutopo worked for PT Mahesa, another subsidiary of the Gramarindo Group.
"All the same old reasons. The files don't contain enough evidence to charge the suspects and bring them to court," said Marwan.
National Police Deputy Spokesman Brig. Gen. Soenarko D.A. said the police would deliver both Hamenda and his file to the Jakarta Prosecutor's Office next Tuesday.
Soenarko added that the police were still await the results of a laboratory examination on a number of documents belonging to Jeffrey Baso and Yudi Baso.
Meanwhile, the police will have to spend more time working on the file on Adrian Woworuntu after it failed to meet the prosecutors' standards for the third time.
"The important thing is that the police keep on trying to complete the files that have been returned to them by the prosecutors," said Soenarko, without elaborating on the file's defects.
Andi Hamzah, an expert witness in Adrian's case, previously said there was convincing evidence to show that Adrian had received a number of money transfers from Maria Lumowa, the main suspect in the case, who is still at large.
According to Marwan, the police had forgotten to provide the account statements proving that the transfers had indeed been sent by Maria to Adrian.
According to Andi, there was evidence that Adrian received a several money transfers from Maria into his private account.
Adrian is the co-owner of Gramarindo, a business group that reportedly received Rp 1.7 trillion (US$200 million) from publicly listed BNI in the form of 41 bogus letters of credit issued by some foreign banks.
Edy Santoso and Koesadiyuwono, former head of the BNI Kebayoran Baru branch, will be the first of 16 suspects in the scam to go on trial in the South Jakarta District Court later this week.
Eight suspects are still on the waiting list and further action against six others will be taken after the police complete their files.