New York private eyes hunt Tansil's wealth

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Finance Mar'ie Muhammad confirmed yesterday that he had hired the services of an American detective agency to hunt some of the assets belonging to Eddy Tansil, the man at the center of a $620 million corruption investigation.

"Someone has written about it and I'm not denying it," Mar'ie told reporters when pressed to comment on the report which was first carried out by the Tempo weekly magazine.

He said the government was hiring an internationally reputed detective firm but he declined to name the company, the Antara news agency reported.

Tempo reported that the government was hiring Kroll Associates Inc. of New York, the same firm that helped the Philippine government locate the assets of former president Ferdinand Marcos. Kroll's most celebrated case was when it helped the Kuwaiti government identify the wealth of Iraq president Saddam Hussein.

Tansil, the owner of the Golden Key Group, was the recipient of $430 million loans from the government-owned Bank Pembangunan Indonesia (Bapindo), apparently with the help of government officials and the bank's executives. He also managed to cash in on all the money in defiance of normal banking practices.

His debts at Bapindo has reached $620 million and the government is now under pressure to recover as much of the money as possible.

The Attorney General's office, which is conducting the investigation, has seized Tansil's and Golden Key Group's assets but it is still left about $200 million to $300 million short.

Yesterday, the Attorney General's spokesman Soeparman said that the Central Jakarta Public Prosecutor's office has extended the warrant to detain Towil Heryoto and Subekti Ismaun, both former Bapindo executives, for 40 more days.

The two, along with Maman Suparman, the former deputy manager of Bapindo's Jakarta branch, and Tansil are the four suspects in the official investigation of the loan scandal.

The government has also confiscated some of the assets belonging to Maman and Subekti but has not touched any of Towil's. (02)