Police freeze suspects' bank accounts
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.