New Zealander fights for Rp 64 million
New Zealander fights for Rp 64 million
JAKARTA (JP): An expatriate from New Zealand is in dispute with the company he used to work for over a sum of money and the right to occupy a rented house in the elite Menteng area of Central Jakarta.
The local property company, PT Arta Buana Sakti, reportedly sent security guards and a number of uniformed people to evict Christopher F.A. Mason from the house on Jl. Teluk Betung on Friday.
On Saturday, a number of executives and security personnel, along with a lawyer representing the company, went to the house to tell the firm's former consultant to leave it.
This reportedly resulted in a protracted and heated argument.
Mason told The Jakarta Post that a group of uniformed security guards and military men carrying guns broke into the house on Friday afternoon, stealing keys and the electric meter.
Mason said on Saturday that the company, which he claims owes him Rp 64 million (US$28,960), wants to take over the house in order to earn cash by leasing it to another person.
PT Arta Buana Sakti is a subsidiary of Harapan Group, which has BHS Bank, Sake Bank and Guna Bank. The business group's property development firm is BHS Land, of which Mason was the general manager for over one year in 1993 and 1994.
Mason said the owner of Harapan Group is Hendra Rahardja, the older brother of Eddy Tansil, who is now in jail for swindling Bapindo bank out of Rp 1.3 trillion.
Mason claims that the company has refused to pay its Rp 64 million residual debt in relation to a breach of the terms of a contract signed by him and Mrs. Cheong Swee Kheng, Rahardja's second wife.
"They only gave me promises, promises," he said.
Based on legal letters signed by him and the firm's executive, he resigned from the firm on Oct. 28 last year and was paid Rp 27.72 million by the company for expenses that he claimed.
Mason also agreed to leave the house on Nov. 1.
"But, he didn't want to leave the house until today and didn't even want to allow us to come inside the house to protect our property that we temporarily put there," Jhon Siswanto from the Legal Department of the Harapan Group told the Post.
"We have been patient enough to allow him stay on our property for about four months," added the group's lawyer Happy SP Sihombing.
But Mason said this is untrue because they "broke the rule" on the next day after the signing of the letters.
Moreover, Mason said, he paid the rent of $2,000 per month by himself. The company, which has contracted the house until June this year, has only paid for part of the period, he said.
"It's not money that I'm talking about, but the way they asked me to leave this house," he said. (bsr)