Police slap travel bans on officials of closed banks

P.C. Naommy, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Police have set up a team to investigate a fraud case involving Bank Dagang Bali (BDB) and Bank Asiatic and issued travel bans for some of the banks' owners and top executives following a report filed by Bank Indonesia (BI) last Thursday.

The central bank revoked the operation permits of the two banks on April 8 due to extreme liquidity problems at the banks, which were allegedly triggered by fraudulent transactions involving Rp 1.2 trillion (US$139) in loans.

National Police Chief Gen. Da'i Bachtiar had signed travel bans for 11 officials of the two closed banks, national chief of detectives Insp. Gen. Suyitno Landung Soedjono announced on Tuesday.

Spokesman Brig. Gen. Soenarko D.A. said the travel bans imposed by the police were to facilitate the investigation.

"None of the 11 bank executives have been named as suspects yet because the team is currently studying all files and documents submitted by BI," Soenarko said. He said the police would summon the 11 as soon as they had finished studying the case.

According to Soenarko, of the 11 high ranking bank executives, six are from Asiatic, the remainder from BDB.

However, Antara, reported the immigration office at Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport had received instructions to impose travel bans on 13 bank executives.

Included among the 13 names were I Gusti Made Oka (BDB's owner and former president director); I Gusti Ngurah Oka Budiana (former president commissioner of BDB); I Nengah Suwardana (former head of BDB's branch in Jakarta); Tong Muk Keung (majority share holder, Asiatic); SB Surendra (former director, Asiatic); Won Tommy Sentana (former marketing director, Asiatic); Ignatius Eddy Candra (former credit director, Asiatic); and Made Budiana (former Asiatic funds and marketing director).

Bank Indonesia senior deputy governor Anwar Nasution said earlier the problems at the banks centered on alleged lending frauds and lending limit violations involving affiliated companies, some of which were fictitious.

The problem came after BDB placed funds at Asiatic in the form of interbank loans and Negotiable Certificates of Deposit (NCD). These were later used by a BDB owner married to a daughter of an Asiatic owner.

Anwar said the amount of the loans, worth Rp 1.2 trillion or 70 percent of the bank's assets of Rp 1.7 trillion, exceeded the legal lending limit allowed by banking law.

The law says a bank is allowed to lend a sum worth up to 10 percent of its assets to an affiliated company.

The Denpasar-based BDB has 408,000 depositors, while the Jakarta-based Asiatic has 2,200 depositors.

Director-General of Financial Institutions Darmin Nasution said the government would pay the depositors of the closed banks within two weeks.