Police seize assets of firms involved in BNI scam
Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Police have confiscated assets worth some Rp 1 trillion (US$125 million) of three firms implicated in the high profile Bank Negara Indonesia (BNI) scandal, but their audited value is not yet known.
"The estimated value of the assets of Gramarindo, Petindo and Mahesa is one trillion rupiah," National Police spokesperson Insp. Gen. Basyir Barmawi said here on Friday.
Basyir, however, stressed that the actual value of the assets was still in question and had to be audited.
"For example, police have held a marble mining site in East Nusa Tenggara, but we received information that the land was in dispute between the owner and the indigenous community there," he said.
The marble mining site is reportedly owned by Maria Pauline Lumowa of PT Gramarindo, an Indonesian-born Dutch citizen who has been declared the principal suspect in the Rp 1.7 trillion (US$200 million) scandal. She is living in Singapore but cannot be deported to Indonesia due to the absence of an extradition treaty between the two countries.
The assets were confiscated from PT Gramarindo, PT Petindo and PT Mahesa.
Basyir said the audit was not the responsibility of the police but that of BNI itself. "But I think the government should send an audit team to check the actual value of those assets," he said.
"We expect to hand over the confiscated assets to BNI soon," he said.
The scandal centers around the channeling of export credit without proper appraisals by BNI's Kebayoran Baru branch in South Jakarta to Gramarindo Group and Petindo Group to finance the export of commodities to the Congo and Kenya.
The exporting companies supported their loan requests with bogus letters of credit (L/Cs) from banks in Kenya, Switzerland and the Cook Islands as collateral. The exports never materialized, hence BNI lost the money.
As for a number of confiscated factories that were still operating, Basyir said the police had not halted their production activities. "We only held the ownership documents of the factories, that's all," he said.
As for Mahesa Group, police investigators disclosed that the company received some money from the scam.
The president director of Mahesa, Harris, was accused of being one of the owners of the 156 account into which funds from the scam had been channeled by Gramarindo.
Harris was detained late December, making him the fourteenth suspect detained by the police, who have detained 16 suspects so far.
Confiscated assets From Gramarindo Group: 1. 31 hectares of land in Cilincing, North Jakarta 2. A house on a 1.1-hectare plot of land in Puri Mutiara, North Jakarta 3. 66-hectares of land and a marble mine in East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) 4. A plant and machines for processing marble in NTT 5. Land for building a plant in NTT (size not available) 6. Ownership of some shares in local companies like PT Sumber Sarana, PT Infinity Finance, PT Sukses Besar 6. Some cash and bank accounts including those that belonged to Maria Pauline (details not available) 7. A debt claim of PT Steady Safe and PT Infinity Finance
From Petindo Group: Fixed assets in Manado, North Sulawesi 1. Two warehouses 2. A potato and carrot processing plant 3. An office building 4. A supermarket 5. A cold storage building 6. A production facility building 7. A flour mill along with its machinery 8. Land planned for Manado Square 9. Assets of private television station Manado TV including a land planned for the TV station building 10. Thirteen units of heavy machinery 11. Several vehicles 12. Two Manado bank accounts and a Jakarta bank account belonging to Petindo
From Mahesa Group: 1. The first to eighth floor of Menara Imperium on Jl. Rasuna Said, South Jakarta 2. Three cars 3. A bank account belonging to Mahesa Group