Mother to sue police for shooting swindle suspect
JAKARTA (JP): The mother of Humala Hutabarat, the country's most sought after bank swindler, will file a lawsuit against City Police for shooting dead her son during a recent raid.
"He gave a policeman Rp 200 million as a bribe. I know the police deliberately shot my son to death because they were afraid that this secret would be exposed," Mrs. Pasaribu, 74, told reporters at Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital on Friday.
The elderly woman, a mother of nine, said that he gave the money to the policeman a few days before he was killed.
However, she refused to identify the policeman. "I will keep it secret until I have submitted the lawsuit. But I have to tell you that the officer comes from our village in North Sumatra," she said as quoted by Pos Kota daily.
Hutabarat, alias Wool Poltak, alias Samsudin Hutabarat, alias Ompung, 54, was shot dead by a police detective in the parking lot of his office Wednesday evening
The officer shot him in the back of the head while he reportedly tried to snatch the gun from the detective. He died instantly.
Mrs. Pasaribu came to Jakarta from Medan, where she lives, on Thursday after being informed by her relatives in Jakarta of her son's death.
She said she could not accept the police's "high-handed action" in killing her son. "Even if my son had resisted arrest, police could have shot his legs instead of the head," she said with tears in her eyes.
Hutabarat's body was flown to his hometown of Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra where he was buried yesterday.
Hutabarat, who had many different aliases, addresses and identification cards, was believed to have embezzled at least Rp 15.39 billion (US$7.04b) during a series of well-planned credit transfer frauds in North Sumatra and Jakarta beginning in 1981. It has been billed as the biggest bank fraud case of its kind in the country.
Hutabarat reportedly carried out his operation by counterfeiting data and forms with the cooperation of a number of clearing staff at respected state banks. Several partners, including his sons, also helped.
City police records show that Hutabarat started his illegal operation by defrauding the Pematang Siantar branch of the state- run Bank Rakyat Indonesia, making off with Rp 845 million. A year later, he stole Rp 445 million from the Medan chapter of the state bank BPD in Medan but was arrested.
He managed to escape, however, before being brought to court.
In 1984, he pulled off another in Medan where he swindled Rp 1.4 billion from BPD.
His first target in Jakarta was BPD which reported a loss of Rp 1.7 billion in 1988. Four years later, BDN Melawai in South Jakarta lost Rp 3.2 billion. Hutabarat and his accomplices, including some of the bank's staff, had issued a fake account and put it into the clearing transfer process.(bas)