Govt urged to take action to help BNI regain assets
Abdul Khalik, Jakarta
Government institutions need to make a concerted effort to recover state bank BNI's Rp 1.3 billion (US$125 billion) in assets, which remain in the hands of those who stole the money.
BNI legal consultant Pradjoto said almost 70 percent of the bank's embezzled assets had been placed in overseas banks, including in Singapore and the U.S., while the remainder was scattered in Indonesian banks.
"We are talking about a huge amount of state money here. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Attorney General's Office, the courts and the National Police must take immediate action together to retrieve BNI's assets," Pradjoto told The Jakarta Post.
He was commenting on the failure of the police and prosecutors to hand over a single rupiah to the state since police revealed the embezzlement six months ago.
Pradjoto said Indonesia could claim the assets placed abroad by asking the governments of the countries where the money was deposited to freeze the accounts and return the money to Indonesia.
"There was a precedent when concerted efforts succeeded in retrieving state money in Hendra Rahardja's case. The government of Australia froze his account and later returned his money to the Indonesian government," he said.
Hendra, who died of kidney cancer in 2003, was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in March 2002 for corruption involving Rp 1.95 trillion (US$200 million based on 1998 exchange rates) of taxpayers' money distributed to two of his banks under the Bank Indonesia Liquidity Assistance program during the 1998 economic crisis.
The Indonesian government managed to recover only A$642,000 (Rp 4.17 billion) of the money.
"I think the government can reclaim the money as long as there is a court verdict that it was earned through corruption. The foreign countries concerned wouldn't want to be accused of holding illegal money," said Pradjoto.
On Thursday BNI president director Sigit Pramono announced that not a single asset had been submitted to BNI after more than six months of legal processing.
It said that of Rp 1.7 trillion initially embezzled, BNI had managed to recover Rp 400 billion through its own efforts.
"As of now, the remaining assets have not changed hands because the suspects have many reasons to avoid doing that. I am suspicious that these funds are being used to bribe officials to delay the case, or for other purposes," said Pradjoto.
Several businesspeople from the Gramarindo and Petindo Groups were accused of obtaining money through deception from the second-largest bank in the country in 2003 by using letters of credit (L/Cs) from correspondent banks in Congo and Kenya to withdraw money from BNI's Kebayoran Baru branch.
The L/Cs turned out to be fake, causing the state bank to suffer losses of Rp 1.7 trillion. Police have named 17 suspects from BNI, Gramarindo and Petindo. Seven are being tried in the South Jakarta court. However, the main suspect, Maria Pauline Lumowa, managed to escape the country.
Pradjoto dismissed allegations that BNI's demand was politically motivated because it came in the wake of campaigning for the presidential election.
"It's just a coincidence that the demand for assets has been raised during the election process," said Pradjoto.