Police freeze suspects' bank accounts
Evi Mariani, Jakarta
The Jakarta Police have frozen several bank accounts belonging to two suspects in an alleged fraud case at Citibank amounting to US$2.3 million.
"We have issued an order to freeze both suspects' accounts in several banks. But, we have yet to gain access (from the banks) to look into their accounts," said city police fiscal and monetary division chief, Adj. Sr. Comr. Dharma Pongrekun, on Tuesday.
Dharma said that Suparmin Atmadja, the director of PT Bangun Mutiara Selatan (BMS) trading company, and Sulfan Sauri (not Sutrisno as cited by the police on Monday), director of PT Sakanti Prima Ceria, would be charged under Article 3 and Article 6 of the Money Laundering Law and Criminal Code Articles 263 on forgery and 378 on embezzlement.
Both offenses carry a maximum of 15 years imprisonment and Rp 15 billion (US$1.67 million) in fines. As for the articles in the Criminal Code, the sentence carries a maximum punishment of six years and four years imprisonment respectively.
The case started in March when Citibank in Mumbai, India, opened a letter of credit (L/C) to finance the import of 40,000 metric tons of coal between Larsen Toubro Limited, a Mumbai-based energy importer, and exporter PT Sico Energy in Jakarta.
Sico later outsourced the execution of the coal export to BMS. For the export transaction, BMS opened an account in Bank Niaga, Jakarta.
BMS was supposed to buy the coal and ship it to Larsen in Mumbai. However, neither the coal purchase nor the shipping took place.
Instead, in mid-April BMS counterfeited at least 10 documents, including shipping documents ostensibly issued by PT Jardine Tangguh Transport Service and coal purchasing documents ostensibly issued by coal mining company PT Kotabaru in Kalimantan.
BMS later submitted the fake documents to Bank Niaga, which forwarded them to Citibank in Jakarta and later to Citibank in Mumbai.
Police said the fake documents looked authentic, prompting Citibank to transfer the $2.3 million to BMS's account in Bank Niaga, without any suspicion.
Based on initial police work, police detectives found that Suparmin transferred some of the money to Sulfan's account. Both suspects were arrested in Jakarta last week.
Police detectives have been trying to trace the flow of the money to determine whether there are other suspects in the case, Dharma said.
The city police special crime detectives chief Sr. Comr. Edmon Ilyas said it was the first money laundering case handled by the city police.