Insurer Manulife questions police's professionalism
JAKARTA (JP): Insurance company PT Asuransi Jiwa Manulife Indonesia (AJMI) questioned on Wednesday the police's professionalism in handling the case involving the disputed sale of a 40 percent stake in the company to its Canadian-based parent company.
The insurance firm accused the police of excluding two "key players" in the alleged sales scam, currently under police investigation.
AJMI was referring to the Virgin Islands-based Roman Gold Assets, which claimed to be the legal owner of the 40 percent stake in AJMI, and the former directors of the now bankrupt PT Dharmala Sakti Sejahtera, which previously owned the shares.
"Despite concrete legal evidence that Dharmala could not have legally sold the shares and that Roman Gold could not have legally bought them, the resulting police investigation has only focussed on the Manulife purchase," AJMI said in a statement.
The dispute between Roman Gold on the one hand and AJMI and its parent company insurance firm Manufacturer Life Insurance Co. (Manulife) on the other, centers around the legal ownership of a 40 percent stake in AJMI.
Roman Gold reported AJMI to the police on charges that the latter had duplicated its own share certificates.
Roman Gold based its claim on the fact that it had acquired the 40 stake in AJMI a few days before Manulife did.
"The police have completely failed to investigate the legitimacy of the Roman Gold claim," AJMI went on.
The insurance firm said that the police were ignoring separate investigations into the case by the Capital Markets Supervisory Agency (Bapepam) and the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA).
IBRA was among the 23 creditors that filed a bankruptcy petition against Dharmala in the Jakarta Commercial Court.
Dharmala is a publicly listed company on the Jakarta Stock Exchange.
The court declared Dharmala bankrupt in June, and it later held an auction of Dharmala assets so that its creditors could recover part of their loans.
Manulife was the sole bidder during the auction of the 40 percent stake in AJMI, for which it paid Rp 170 billion (some US$17.89 million)
The purchase raised its stake in AJMI to 91 percent from 51 percent. A subsidiary of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), owns the remaining nine percent.
Roman Gold then disputed the auction, saying that it had earlier acquired the 40 percent stake from a Singapore-based firm, Highmead Limited.
It said that Highmead was the holder of a Power of Attorney, issued by Dharmala's former directors, authorizing the sale of the 40 percent stake.
However, Bapepam's own preliminary investigation showed that Dharmala had never disclosed the existence of such a document.
Although AJMI filed its own criminal charges against Roman Gold and the former directors of Dharmala last month, thus far the police have yet to report any progress in the case.
At present, the executives of AJMI and court officers, including a judge, remain the subject of police investigation. (bkm)