Files on one BNI suspect accepted, rest rejected: Police
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.