Police question three people for role in BNI scandal
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Police investigators intensively interrogated three persons on Friday for their roles in the Rp 1.7 trillion Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) scandal.
National Detective Police chief Com. Gen. Erwin Mappaseng said that police had arrested the director of PT Gramarindo Mega Indonesia, Olla Abdullah Agam, the director of PT Metrantara, Richard Kountul, and the director of PT Maqnetique Usaha Esa Indonesia, and questioned them strenuously on Friday.
Mappaseng also said police would issue warrants for the arrest of three suspects.
"We can only hold them for questioning them for 24 hours, so we will have to issue warrants of arrest for them tonight," Mappasaeng said.
Police were not available on Friday evening to confirm whether or not they had issued warrants of arrest for the three suspects.
PT Gramarindo Mega Indonesia, PT Metrantara and PT Maqnetique Usaha Esa Indonesia are believed to have reaped billions of rupiah from 41 fictitious letters of credit worth Rp 1.7 trillion redeemed by state-owned BNI from 2002 through 2003.
Police had earlier declared five others as suspects. They are head of BNI Kebayoran Baru branch Koesadiyono and its Foreign Customer Division head Edy Santoso, owner of PT Basomasindo Jeffry Baso, director of PT Pan Kifros Aprila Widharta, and Judhi Basso of PT Bassamindo.
The scandal began when BNI's Kebayoran Branch in South Jakarta granted export credits to eight Gramarindo and Petindo group subsidiaries with L/Cs issued by banks in Kenya, Switzerland and the Cook Islands as collateral. They claimed to be exporting commodities to the Republic of Congo and Kenya. Without conducting any formal assessments or checks, the branch disbursed the export credits from Dec. 2002 through July 2003.
Police suspect that the bills attached to the L/Cs were fraudulent, as the goods were never exported -- but the export loans were channeled.
The prime suspect of the scandal, Maria Pauliene Lumowa, is still at large in Singapore.
Erwin also said Friday that two officers of two foreign banks, ABN Amro and Standard Charter, had been questioned as witnesses over their roles in the process of issuing the alleged fraudulent letters of credit.
"We can't specify the results of the cross check because we need to put things together first. After this, we will also question people at Citibank," he said.
The case became highly politicized when several media reported this week that a large part of the money had been distributed to three presidential candidates from the Golkar party. However, Akbar Tanjung, the party chairman has denied the rumor.
National Police chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar also denied the rumor Friday, saying that police did not know of any money falling into the hands of politicians.
"I think it comes from the media themselves and they exaggerate the rumor. Anyway, we are trying to find out where the money went," said Da'i.
Erwin said Friday that police investigators would refer to several laws and regulations that may have been violated in the scam, including Criminal Code Article 263 on document forgery, law No. 10/1998 on banking, law No. 20/2001 on anticorruption and law No. 15/2002 on money laundering, in order to net the suspects.