RI corrupters may face international tribunal

RI corrupters may face international tribunal

A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Fifteen of Indonesia's highest-profile names implicated in
corruption could face trials in the same international court now
trying former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosovic for
genocide.

An international non-governmental organization is now seeking
a legal opinion from the Netherlands-based International Court of
Justice (ICJ) on the possibility of trying Indonesian corrupters
there.

"We have filed our data regarding several corruption cases
involving 15 alleged corrupters here to the ICJ," Opus Supremus'
Indonesia chairman Stanislav Velinov told reporters on Friday.

Opus Supremus is an international anticorruption NGO with
well-established networks in 42 countries.

Stanislav refused to reveal the names of the 15 alleged
corrupters saying only that 10 of them were implicated in the
US$16 Billion Bank Indonesia Liquidity Loan (BLBI) corruption
cases.

"Should we disclose their names now, they might flee the
country, or attempt other tricks to avoid international
prosecution."

Stanislav, a Bulgarian, said on Friday that he had held
informal meetings several weeks ago in Paris with several
executives of several banks in Europe, international lawyers and
several government officials in Europe whose governments were
Indonesian creditors.

"The figures I met in Paris concluded that our legal data was
sufficient and the cases could be filed at the ICJ to be
examined," Stanislav said.

Opus Supremus' Indonesian office was established in 2001. The
anti-corruption organization serves international investors,
helping to unravel and combat corruption practices in host
countries.

According to Stanislav, his organization decided to move
forward by forwarding the legal data to the ICJ.

He said usually, it took four months to five months before the
ICJ gave their answer in the form of a legal opinion.

"Should the ICJ later say that our cases are worth being
pursued in the international court, we will soon file lawsuits
against those corruptors at the ICJ so that the alleged
corruptors could be prosecuted in the international court,"
Stanislav said.

ICJ's legal opinion is much awaited not only by Opus Supremus,
but also by other organizations such as Interpol.

"If the legal opinion says that the alleged corruption cases
are worthy of being investigated, this could be a legal basis for
the authorities to freeze the bank accounts of the alleged
corruptors or take other legal action such as travel bans," he
said.

Stanislav, however, admitted that his office's attempt had no
precedent.

In the last 50 years, there had been 24 attempts to seek the
legal opinion of the ICJ, but none of the cases, from a number of
countries, concerned the corruption cases. Most were for human
rights violations, such as ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.