Police general admits to receiving car from BNI suspect

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Former National Police chief of detectives Comr. Gen. Suyitno Landung, who has been named a bribery suspect, admitted on Thursday to having received an upmarket car from a suspect linked to fraud at a state-owned bank.

He said the car, a Nissan X-Trail, was given to him when he was overseeing the investigation into the Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) scam in 2003.

Suyitno, the current vice governor of the National Resilience Institute (Lemhannas), explained that he was ordering an operational car for his office, but later found out that the car had already been paid for by his "old friend".

The friend he made reference to is a businessman named Ishak, who has been detained since October for his alleged involvement in the BNI scandal.

However, Suyitno said he had returned the car, worth more than Rp 300 million (US$30,600), to the police on Tuesday, after being declared a suspect for allegedly abusing his power when probing the BNI scam.

"The reason for the delay in returning the car was that I lost the vehicle ownership document. But I later found out that the document was already being held by police investigators," he told The Jakarta Post.

Police investigators believe Suyitno received bribes, including the car and cash amounting to as much as Rp 300 million, from several suspects.

"How can they accuse me of accepting cash? There were many people who made cash donations for police operations. How would I have managed to send a police team to the Netherlands (to investigate the death of human rights activist Munir) if I didn't receive such donations?" the three-star general asked.

"Besides, how much is a Nissan X-Trail worth anyway? It is not much," he added.

Apart from Suyitno, former head of the police fraud squad Brig. Gen. Samuel Ismoko and his subordinate Sr. Comr. Irman Santosa were also detained on similar charges.

The two were accused of taking bribes from BNI directors and bank graft convict Adrian Waworuntu, all of whom, it is believed, attempted to obstruct justice so the cases against them would be dropped.

Ishak and Jeffri Baso, both Adrian's accomplices, also allegedly gave Ismoko a check for Rp 15.5 billion in order for the latter to play down Adrian's role in the case.

The BNI case centered on the issuance of fictitious letters of credit by the state-run bank's Kebayoran Baru branch in South Jakarta, causing the state to suffer some Rp 1.7 trillion in financial losses.

The loan scam was made possible due to collusion between certain bank officials and a number of businesspeople linked to a company called PT Gramarindo.

Former BNI compliance director Mohammad Arsjad had also been detained for his alleged role in the fraud case. The police are still hunting down another key suspect, Maria Pauline Lumowa, who was director of Gramarindo.