New York private eyes hunt Tansil's wealth
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)