Maria Lumowa's sister arrested for BNI scandal
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Another relative of Maria Paulien Lumowa, a prime suspect in the Rp 1.7 trillion (US$200 million) Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) scam, has been arrested for alleged involvement.
National Police chief of detectives Com. Gen. Erwin Mappaseng said on Friday that Maria's sister Jean Lumowa was arrested on Thursday evening based on statements made by other suspects.
"We declared Jean Lumowa, a younger sister of Maria Pauline Lumowa, as a suspect on Thursday based on information we have obtained from the other suspects," Mappaseng said.
"We have her here at headquarters awaiting her detention order," he said.
The arrest is likely to inflict psychological pressure on Maria Paulien, who is still at large, to surrender to police and face the music. Another prime suspect, Adrian Waworuntu, was detained earlier this week. A total of 12 people have so far been declared suspects in the scam and are now in detention cells.
Jean, a director of PT Sagared, is the second member of the Lumowa family to be arrested in relation to the BNI case following the arrest of Adrian Pandelaki Lumowa, a director of PT Magnetique Usaha Esa Indonesia.
PT Sagared is the holding company for all of the subsidiaries of the better known Gramarindo group. The subsidiaries that have so far been implicated in the scandal are PT Bassomasindo, PT Bhinekatama Pacific, PT Gramarindo Mega Indonesia, PT Magnetique Usaha Esa Indonesia, PT Triranu Caraka Pasifik, PT Pan Kifros, PT Ferry Masterindo and PT Metrantara.
Mappaseng said that the police would encourage Jean to request Maria to surrender. Maria has been at large for about a month since she was declared a suspect in October.
"We still hope that she will come to us but if she refuses we will use every possible means to arrest her," said Erwin.
The police had earlier managed to arrest nine suspects in the scandal, including three BNI officers, and six from the Gamarindo group's subsidiaries.
The scandal began when BNI's Kebayoran Baru branch in South Jakarta granted export credits to the Gramarindo group's subsidiaries using letters of credit (L/C) issued by banks in Kenya, Switzerland and the Cook Islands as collateral. They claimed to be exporting commodities to the Republic of Congo and Kenya. Without conducting any formal assessments or checks, the branch disbursed the export credits between December 2002 and July 2003.
The police suspect that the bills attached to the L/Cs were fictitious as the goods were never imported -- the export loans were, however, disbursed.
"We have concluded that we have all the evidence necessary to continue the investigation against all of the suspects," said Erwin.
He also said that the police investigators would use a number of laws and regulations that appeared to have been violated in the scam, including article 263 of the Criminal Code on document forgery, Law No. 10/1998 on banking, Law No. 20/2001 on corruption and Law No. 15/2002 on money laundering.
Rumors have also been rife that three presidential candidates from the Golkar Party received money from individuals implicated in the scandal.
Golkar Party chairman Akbar Tanjung, Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Jusuf Kalla and Gen. (ret) Wiranto, all Golkar Party presidential candidates, denied the allegations.
However, the political dimensions of the case reignited when a letter written by Edi Santoso, the former foreign customer relations manager in the BNI branch at the center of the scam, was leaked to the press on Tuesday.
The letter stated that Edi Santoso, together with suspected business persons, met Wiranto to discuss Wiranto's plan to run for the presidency in 2004.
Wiranto quickly denied this the following day, saying that he did not know Edi and had no relations with any of the suspects.