In absentia trials set for fugitive bankers

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Attorney General's Office (AGO) is set to hold in absentia trials against bad bankers who fled the country after allegedly stealing huge amounts of state funds, in what is seen as the first major attempt after many years to return a sense of justice to taxpayers.

But the plan took a new turn last week, when one of the suspects reportedly offered to return the embezzled funds plus interest on the condition that the AGO dropped his case.

Deputy Attorney General for Special Crimes Hendarman Supandji said late last week that his prosecutors had been working hard to compile the case files so that they could be submitted to the court soon for in absentia trials.

The office expected to be able to submit to the court at the end of this month a case involving the former president of the now defunct Bank Pelita, Agus Anwar.

If all goes according to plan, the court will start the in absentia trial against Agus within a few weeks.

Agus is one of dozens of former bankers and bank owners who have been accused of misusing billions of dollars worth of Bank Indonesia liquidity support funds channeled to salvage ailing banks in the wake of the late 1997 financial crisis.

The case is known here as the BLBI case, which according to one estimate caused state losses amounting to around Rp 137 trillion (US$14.4 billion).

According to the prosecutors' files, Agus Anwar has caused a state loss of around Rp 492 billion. He is now believed to be hiding in Singapore, a country that has no extradition treaty with Indonesia.

Previous governments have been strongly criticized for failing to take firm action against the bad bankers -- who are mostly politically well-connected people -- and to recover state losses, thus leaving taxpayers to foot the bill. So far, only three former Bank Indonesia officials have been convicted, while a couple of bad bankers convicted were given light sentences.

When President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono assumed office last year, he vowed to curb the rampant corruption in the country, including through efforts to bring people involved in the BLBI case to court and to recover state losses.

As many of the bank bankers have fled the country particularly to countries with no extradition treaty with Indonesia, and efforts to trace their personnel assets to recover state losses have been fruitless the AGO then proposed the in absentia trials, the primary objective of which is to ensure a sense of justice among taxpayers who had been forced to cover the state losses.

But Hendarman hopes that the in absentia trials would also help the AGO to seize the bankers' fixed assets left in Indonesia.

If the suspects are convicted by the court, it would be easier for the AGO to seize their assets, which have probably been quietly transferred to under the ownership of other people as proxies.

"If we have to wait until they are arrested then it will take a long time, more important is that we recover the assets first -- and that can only be done in court," Hendarman said.

Previously, prosecutors found 500 hectares of land in Bogor allegedly owned by Agus, but later they found out the land was under the ownership of another banker.

Prosecutors, however, may now be in a dilemmatic situation after Agus last week reportedly offered to repay some Rp 592 billion in state losses -- including interest -- as long as the criminal case against him was dropped. The proposal was submitted by a man claiming to represent Agus.

Hendarman, however, insisted that the AGO should proceed with the court trial, a stance supported by antigraft campaigners.

According to Law No. 31/1999 on Anticorruption, the returned money or assets would have no impact on the criminal prosecution of the case.