Insurance firm Manulife to sue former Dharmala boss

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)