Insurance firm Manulife to sue former Dharmala boss

JAKARTA (JP): The Canadian-based insurance company Manufacturer Life Insurance Co. will sue the former president of the now bankrupt PT Dharmala Sakti Sejahtera in a Singapore civil court over a share purchase dispute as the legal fight between the parties involved heats up.

Managing director of Manulife's Indonesian subsidiary PT Asuransi Jiwa Manulife Indonesia (AJMI), Chris Bendl said on Friday that Manulife would sue Dharmala's former president Suyanto Gondokusumo for money laundering.

"We suspect him to be in Singapore," Bendl told reporters in a press meeting.

He said that the selling of a 40 percent stake in AJMI by Suyanto to the British Virign Islands company Roman Assets Limited, was an illegal transaction.

The 40 percent stake was previously held by the publicly listed Dharmala, which the Jakarta Commercial Court declared bankrupt in June.

Following the verdict, the court held a tender to auction off Dharmala's 40 percent stake, as part of recouping the loans of its creditors. Manulife, the sole bidder, won the tender raising its stake from 51 percent to 91 percent in AJMI.

AJMI is a joint venture between Manulife and a subsidiary of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), with a nine percent ownership.

However, Roman claimed to have purchased the stake earlier from a Western Samoan firm, Highmead Limited, using a power of attorney which Suyanto had signed.

Bendl called the sale illegal, since Suyanto had failed to notify Dharmala's shareholders about the existence of such a document.

The Capital Market Supervisory Agency (Bapepam) also faulted Suyanto for the sale, because neither the agency nor the Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) had been informed about the document.

"Suyanto even included the AJMI assets in the restructuring package to (Dharmala's) creditors," Bendl said.

Because of these details, he said, the suspicion of money laundering practices was high. He also called Roman and Highmead paper companies, whose establishment was merely to facilitate Suyanto's illegal transactions.

On Monday, Manulife filed a law suit in Hong Kong against Harvest Hero International Ltd, a Hong Kong-based company which originally received Suyanto's power of attorney before it was entrusted to Highmead.

Bendl speculated that Suyanto was trying to undo the court's auction and maintain his ownership in AJMI through one of his paper companies.

Roman has already made the police detain AJMI's vice president Adhie Purnomo and court receiver Ari Acmad Effendi, on charges of duplicating AJMI's shares for the tender process.

On the same day, the Foundation of Indonesian Insurance Consumers (YLKAI) filed a lawsuit against Ministry of Finance insurance director, Firdaus Djaelani, at the State Administrative Court on Friday, over the allegedly fraudulent purchase of shares.

YLKAI chief Soewandi said that Manulife's purchase of the 40 percent stake of Dharmala in AJMI, was approved by Firdaus on Sept. 27, 20 days before it was officially declared on Oct. 17 that the shares were to be auctioned.

The auction itself, Soewandi said, was held on Oct. 26.

"Why was the approval letter issued before the auction was declared, and a month before the actual auction date?" Soewandi told The Jakarta Post.

Soewandi then demanded that the court dismiss the approval letter issued by Firdaus as illegal, and revoke it.

Firdaus, Soewandi said, had also violated Paragraph 2 of Article 6 and Paragraph 10a of Government Regulation No. 63/1999, which bans foreign investors from owning more than 80 percent of an insurance company. (bkm/ylt)