In absentia trials set for fugitive bankers

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.